Priorities really?

Well, I know how to use priorities and assign them in my testing. It allows me to be able to structure the coverage that i will give based on the time and resources that are available.

It has struck me looking around that their seems to be alot of people that dont do this either because they dont know or dont see the reasons for doing this. So although I am definatly not the expert on this I thought I would list a few reasons why I think that prioritising is important.

1. Test scenarios with priority can be placed before stakeholders to decide exactly what needs to be covered and what can be left out. This can be done before any real outlay is made.
2. When testing gets crunched as it always does.. rather than struggling to cover everything in to little time, you can say "we will only be able to cover priority 1 and 2 tests in the time available as per the time scales we have already provided".
3. Tests with high priority can be executed where possible first to maximise effectiveness.
4. In large groups it can be made clear to everyone what order script production and test execution needs to be performed.

This is just to name a few things I have thought of off hand ... on a saturday night with a beer in one hand and fork of chicken fried rice in the other.