Severity Scale

The Design System Team uses a number of factors to determine the priority of issues in our backlog. Among them is the degree of impact on our Watermark developers and designers and/or the users of our Watermark products. When reporting an issue or requesting an update or new component or design guideline, please assign one of the following severity levels to help us better understand the impact.

Critical

An issue at the critical level is a blocker for a team, or is unavoidably affecting a large number of users in production, such as:

  • a component will result in incorrect data being displayed or added to the user's database
  • the component breaks the user's workflow
  • a component does not fulfill its fundamental purpose

Major

A major issue is:

  • a defect that seriously impairs users, but for which a workaround exists
  • a defect that may hinder the workflow of a significant number of users
  • new component functionality that a team has on its roadmap for a provided date/iteration
  • a new design pattern or guidelines that a team would like to have by a provided date in order to meet a PI goal

Moderate/Limited

Everything else. There is no impending need or there is no significant impact on users.

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