Abstraction

Make the model easy to recognize and judge without making it less true. The right amount of detail is what this person needs to understand, correct, or act on it; brevity alone does not reduce their work.

Start from what the person is trying to accomplish and the judgment in front of them. Show the governing relationship before its machinery. Preserve the actors, ownership, sequence, and consequences that change that judgment; leave history and incidental implementation detail available for later.

Choose the form from what needs to be understood. Prose can carry a claim, a comparison can expose a trade-off, and code or a diagram can make a relationship concrete. Use visual hierarchy so the point requiring attention is easy to find. A successful layout in one conversation is not a required format for the next.