Pattern name 

Explication(see the alternative, Abstraction).

'''Problem'''

How do we deal with a situation or object which has too much detail to comprehend or be useful?

'''Solution'''

Make all the detail visible at once. Get a big table or a
blank wall and put everything you know up there at once.
Use PostIts (or IndexCard''''''s with spray adhesive). Write one
detail on each card. Spatially sort the details every which way you can think of (what are some of the sorts?)

'''Comment'''

When the problem is that everybody sees the trees but not
the forest, AbStraction is a good solution. Programmers
jump to abstraction because it is the most powerful tool
in our thinking toolkit. Often, though, AbStraction obscures 
the real problem, because not enough is yet known.

----
I wonder.
"We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world." ZenAndTheArtOfMotorcycleMaintenance
--- MartineDevos