diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.rst b/CONTRIBUTING.rst
index ae13ba6..864b208 100644
--- a/CONTRIBUTING.rst
+++ b/CONTRIBUTING.rst
@@ -1,11 +1,12 @@
-If you would like to contribute to the development of OpenStack,
-you must follow the steps in this page:
+If you would like to contribute to the development of OpenStack, you must
+follow the steps in this page:
 
    http://docs.openstack.org/infra/manual/developers.html
 
-Once those steps have been completed, changes to OpenStack
-should be submitted for review via the Gerrit tool, following
-the workflow documented at:
+If you already have a good understanding of how the system works and your
+OpenStack accounts are set up, you can skip to the development workflow
+section of this documentation to learn how changes to OpenStack should be
+submitted for review via the Gerrit tool:
 
    http://docs.openstack.org/infra/manual/developers.html#development-workflow
 
diff --git a/{{cookiecutter.repo_name}}/CONTRIBUTING.rst b/{{cookiecutter.repo_name}}/CONTRIBUTING.rst
index cdc2669..e3d50e8 100644
--- a/{{cookiecutter.repo_name}}/CONTRIBUTING.rst
+++ b/{{cookiecutter.repo_name}}/CONTRIBUTING.rst
@@ -2,14 +2,15 @@
 Contributing to: {{ cookiecutter.repo_name }}
 =============================================
 
-If you would like to contribute to the development of OpenStack,
-you must follow the steps in this page:
+If you would like to contribute to the development of OpenStack, you must
+follow the steps in this page:
 
    http://docs.openstack.org/infra/manual/developers.html
 
-Once those steps have been completed, changes to OpenStack
-should be submitted for review via the Gerrit tool, following
-the workflow documented at:
+If you already have a good understanding of how the system works and your
+OpenStack accounts are set up, you can skip to the development workflow
+section of this documentation to learn how changes to OpenStack should be
+submitted for review via the Gerrit tool:
 
    http://docs.openstack.org/infra/manual/developers.html#development-workflow