**qgil** wrote on `2014-07-30 11:21:22 (UTC)`

**tl;dr**

Priority + Impact Tags + Effort points + Sprints is a better combination to plan our work. I would not migrate Bugzilla's Severity field as a custom field in our Phabricator.

In detail:

Considering that we are discussing the steps required before Day 1.

Considering that Severity is supposed to be helpful to plan future sprints or the next task that you will work on.

Considering that we have these priority options agreed for Day 1 (T436):

* Needs Triage
* Unbreak Now!
* High
* Medium
* Needs Volunteer

And considering that Bugzilla has these Severity options:

* Blocker: 	 Blocks further development and/or testing work.
* Critical: 	 Crashes, loss of data (internally, not your edit preview!) in a widely used and important component.
* Major: 	 Major loss of function in an important area.
* Normal: 	 Default/average.
* Minor: 	 Minor loss of function, or other problem that does not affect many people or where an easy workaround is present.
* Trivial: 	 Cosmetic problem like misspelled words or misaligned text which does not really cause problems.
* Enhancement:    Request for a new feature or change in functionality for an existing feature.

I still think that a Severity/Impact field forced onto all tasks is an overkill that will create more noise than usefulness. Our Bugzilla is a tangible proof. Think also that our Phabricator will not only be open for bugs but for all kinds of tasks. I would not migrate Severity as a custom field, but as a searchable text string in the task description.

If a bug is a "Blocker", causes "Crash" or "Data Loss" (Blocker / Critical in Bugzilla) then we can project-tag them that way, being more specific and not making assumptions like "It crashes, therefore it has a severe impact on many people". If a bug blocks development, crashes applications, and destroys data in a bad way, it will be "Unbreak Now" or "High" priority, a candidate in any sprint planning meeting until it is solved.

Discussing severity/impact Major-Normal, Normal-Minor, and Minor-Trivial is not very different from discussing priority High-Medium or Medium-Needs Volunteer. Basically you are discussing whether a problem is annoying enough to be considered by you / your team soon, some day in the future, or never.

And Enhancement is out this equation anyway, as Andre says.