diff --git a/.backup.requirements-dev.txt b/.backup.requirements-dev.txt
deleted file mode 100644
index 0fbb1c4472..0000000000
--- a/.backup.requirements-dev.txt
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,13 +0,0 @@
--r requirements.txt
-azure-ai-formrecognizer==3.2.1
-Markdown==3.4.4
-requests==2.31.0
-tqdm==4.66.1
-tiktoken==0.4.0
-langchain==0.0.340
-bs4==0.0.1
-urllib3==2.1.0
-pytest==7.4.0
-pytest-asyncio==0.23.2
-azure-storage-blob
-chardet
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/.backup.requirements.txt b/.backup.requirements.txt
deleted file mode 100644
index 047642ce2e..0000000000
--- a/.backup.requirements.txt
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,11 +0,0 @@
-azure-identity==1.15.0
-# Flask[async]==2.3.2
-openai==1.6.1
-azure-search-documents==11.4.0b6
-azure-storage-blob==12.17.0
-python-dotenv==1.0.0
-azure-cosmos==4.5.0
-quart==0.19.4
-uvicorn==0.24.0
-aiohttp==3.9.2
-gunicorn==20.1.0
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index b6dfe7581a..a51fe508e4 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -15,12 +15,20 @@ This repo contains sample code for a simple chat webapp that integrates with Azu
 The following tools should be installed prior to running the project locally.
 
 #### Frontend tools
-- nodejs 21+
+- Node.js 21+
 
 #### Backend tools
 - Python 3.10+
 - [Poetry](https://python-poetry.org/docs/#installation)
 
+## Development workflow
+
+This project uses [Poetry](https://python-poetry.org/) to manage project dependencies.  It is recommended to follow these steps for managing your local Python development environment.
+
+1. Run `poetry install` to bootstrap your local development environment with this project and its dependencies.  This command will create a virtual environment containing all of the project dependencies under the `.venv` directory.
+2. Use the `poetry add`, `poetry update` and `poetry remove` commands to modify packages in the environment.  See the [Poetry CLI](https://python-poetry.org/docs/cli) docs for more information about arguments to those commands. 
+3. When you are ready to deploy your app or submit a PR, generate a requirements.txt file for the app using the command `poetry export --dev --without-hashes --format=requirements.txt --output=requirements-dev.txt`.
+
 ## Deploy the app
 
 ### Deploy with Azure Developer CLI