How should a small team prioritise bugs?
Score impact and reach on an agreed scale. Fix critical bugs now and schedule the rest at triage.
Start here
Score each bug on two things, impact and reach, and agree in advance what each level means. Then treat the top level as interrupt-worthy and schedule everything else.
Impact
- Critical: data loss, security exposure, or the product unusable
- High: a core task broken with no workaround
- Medium: broken but with a workaround
- Low: cosmetic or minor annoyance
Reach
How many users hit it, and how often? A medium bug that every user meets daily may matter more than a high one that a single edge case triggers once a year.
Put it together
- Critical: stop and fix now
- High with wide reach: next in line
- Everything else: into the backlog, reviewed at triage
- Low and stale: close it honestly rather than let it rot
Keep it simple
Small teams don’t need elaborate scoring. A shared definition and a weekly review beat any formula nobody follows.
Put it into practice with a calm bug triage.