Ask HN: What practices do you follow for triage?

What practices or resources have you used for software issue triage?

It seems to me that different parties bring different motivations when they communicate on software issues. The reporting party is motivated to have their issue fixed, but the triaging party needs to decide how that work fits into whatever engineering/time/budget constraints.

There is also a sort of mismatch between information needs. To make a decision, the triager wants unambiguous diagnostic info. On the other hand, the reporter wants high-level ETA on a fix or visibility on the priority.

What approaches have you taken for effective triage communication? Are there any lessons from medical triage that you've found applies to software?