diff --git a/backend/.idea/.gitignore b/backend/.idea/.gitignore
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..26d3352
--- /dev/null
+++ b/backend/.idea/.gitignore
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+# Default ignored files
+/shelf/
+/workspace.xml
diff --git a/backend/HELP.md b/backend/HELP.md
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index 0000000..e7557f7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/backend/HELP.md
@@ -0,0 +1,24 @@
+# Getting Started
+
+### Reference Documentation
+For further reference, please consider the following sections:
+
+* [Official Apache Maven documentation](https://maven.apache.org/guides/index.html)
+* [Spring Boot Maven Plugin Reference Guide](https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/3.4.1/maven-plugin)
+* [Create an OCI image](https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/3.4.1/maven-plugin/build-image.html)
+* [Spring Web](https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/3.4.1/reference/web/servlet.html)
+
+### Guides
+The following guides illustrate how to use some features concretely:
+
+* [Building a RESTful Web Service](https://spring.io/guides/gs/rest-service/)
+* [Serving Web Content with Spring MVC](https://spring.io/guides/gs/serving-web-content/)
+* [Building REST services with Spring](https://spring.io/guides/tutorials/rest/)
+
+### Maven Parent overrides
+
+Due to Maven's design, elements are inherited from the parent POM to the project POM.
+While most of the inheritance is fine, it also inherits unwanted elements like `<license>` and `<developers>` from the parent.
+To prevent this, the project POM contains empty overrides for these elements.
+If you manually switch to a different parent and actually want the inheritance, you need to remove those overrides.
+