Question 347 - CTFL-2018 discussion

Priority is an important item of information that is missing from the incident report. Priority indicates the importance or urgency of resolving the incident, based on the business needs and the impact on the stakeholders. Priority is usually assigned by the project manager or the customer, and it helps to determine the order in which incidents should be addressed. Priority may differ from severity, which indicates the degree of impact of the incident on the system or the component under test. Severity is usually assigned by the tester or the developer, and it helps to assess the risk of the incident. For example, an incident may have a high severity but a low priority, if it affects a critical function but only occurs in a rare situation. Conversely, an incident may have a low severity but a high priority, if it affects a minor function but occurs frequently or affects many users. Therefore, both priority and severity are useful information for incident management and resolution.

The other options are not essential information for the incident report, although they may be helpful or desirable in some cases. Recommendations are suggestions or proposals for resolving the incident, which may be provided by the tester, the developer, or other stakeholders. However, recommendations are not mandatory, and they may not be feasible or acceptable in some situations. Name of tester is the identifier of the person who reported the incident, which may be useful for communication or accountability purposes. However, name of tester is not critical, and it may be replaced by other identifiers, such as email address, employee number, or role. Change history is the record of the changes made to the incident report, such as status, resolution, or comments. Change history is valuable for tracking and auditing purposes, but it is not part of the initial incident report, rather it is updated as the incident progresses.