🧭 A Simple and Single ENTRY POINT

This is the original. A copy was posted on LinkedIn.

Imagine walking into a restaurant. The first thing you look for is the menu: one obvious place to see what’s available and decide what to do next.

Now imagine a restaurant with no menu. You flag down a server. They name a few dishes but not all. You’re told to ask someone else. That person is on break. You try again later. Others around you are doing the same.

It sounds absurd. But this is how many projects operate.

In software, the menu is the README file: shown front and center when you join a codebase. You only need to know one thing to get started: where the README is.

A good README isn’t just a file. It’s designed empathy: written by someone who’s been through the same confusion and took the time to smooth the path for the next person. Where do I start? How do I run this? Who do I talk to?

The README has become a de facto standard because it works. If it were suddenly missing, there would be widespread complaints: not out of pedantry, but because it would waste everyone’s time.

Now think about the last time you joined a non-software project:

• Someone sends a Teams chat with a PowerPoint 📎
• Then a SharePoint folder where documents go to die 📁
• Then a Confluence page last updated 8 months ago 🕸️
• When none of that helps, you ping Sarah, who’s swamped, and she sends you to Mike, who eventually finds something buried in old emails 📬

This scavenger hunt, repeating for each new person in every project, is a massive invisible tax. A quiet cost in time, attention, and morale.

🔖 The Missing Entry Point

What every project needs (and rarely has) is a single Entry Point: a “start here” page that anticipates a newcomer’s questions and links out to everything else.

• What are we building and why?
• Who are the key people?
• Where are the tools and docs?
• What are the current priorities?
• How do I contribute?

Not a sprawling wiki. Not a link graveyard. Just one designed entry experience that orients you fast and points clearly to what matters next.

This shouldn’t be revolutionary. But somehow, it still is.

❓ So my questions

👉 What’s the project equivalent of a README in your org? 👉 Who owns it: and how do you balance clear ownership with shared responsibility so it evolves, rather than decays?

If your team has something like this that works, I’d love to hear about it. And if not — what’s stopping us?

Feel free to tag someone who’s built a great Entry Point 🧭 Or leave a 🧭 in the comments if you’ve lived this scavenger hunt.

Obviously I wrote this with Al