diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.md b/CONTRIBUTING.md
index f043dfdf03..7c3989dd71 100644
--- a/CONTRIBUTING.md
+++ b/CONTRIBUTING.md
@@ -17,14 +17,13 @@ Contributions are welcomed! Here's a few things to know:
 
 Here are the basic steps to get started with your first contribution. Please reach out with any questions.
 1. Use [open issues](https://github.com/Microsoft/Recommenders/issues) to discuss the proposed changes. Create an issue describing changes if necessary to collect feedback. Also, please use provided labels to tag issues so everyone can easily sort issues of interest.
-2. [Fork the repo](https://help.github.com/articles/fork-a-repo/) so you can make and test local changes.
-3. Create a new branch **from staging branch** for the issue (please do not create a branch from main). We suggest prefixing the branch with your username and then a descriptive title: (e.g. gramhagen/update_contributing_docs)
-4. Install reco-utils package locally using the right optional dependency for your test. (e.g. gpu test: `pip install -e .[gpu]`
-5. Install development requirements. `pip install -r dev-requirements.txt`
-6. Create a test that replicates the issue.
-7. Make code changes.
-8. Ensure that unit tests pass and code style / formatting is consistent (see the [coding guidelines](https://github.com/Microsoft/Recommenders/wiki/Coding-Guidelines#python-and-docstrings-style) for more details). In particular, make sure that there is a docstring for every function and class you add and that it conforms to the [Google style](http://sphinxcontrib-napoleon.readthedocs.io/en/latest/example_google.html). 
-9. Create a pull request against **staging** branch.
+1. [Fork the repo](https://help.github.com/articles/fork-a-repo/) so you can make and test local changes.
+1. Create a new branch **from staging branch** for the issue (please do not create a branch from main). We suggest prefixing the branch with your username and then a descriptive title: (e.g. gramhagen/update_contributing_docs)
+1. Install reco-utils package locally using the right optional dependency for your test and the dev option. (e.g. gpu test: `pip install -e .[gpu,dev]`)
+1. Create a test that replicates the issue.
+1. Make code changes.
+1. Ensure unit tests pass and code style / formatting is consistent (see [wiki](https://github.com/Microsoft/Recommenders/wiki/Coding-Guidelines#python-and-docstrings-style) for more details).
+1. Create a pull request against **staging** branch.
 
 Once the features included in a [milestone](https://github.com/microsoft/recommenders/milestones) are completed, we will merge staging into main. See the wiki for more detail about our [merge strategy](https://github.com/microsoft/recommenders/wiki/Strategy-to-merge-the-code-to-main-branch).
 
diff --git a/SETUP.md b/SETUP.md
index ef3f4bff7a..45b44c9aa0 100644
--- a/SETUP.md
+++ b/SETUP.md
@@ -23,6 +23,7 @@ This document describes how to setup all the dependencies to run the notebooks i
     - [Troubleshooting Installation on Azure Databricks](#troubleshooting-installation-on-azure-databricks)
     - [Prepare Azure Databricks for Operationalization](#prepare-azure-databricks-for-operationalization)
   - [Setup guide for Docker](#setup-guide-for-docker)
+  - [Setup guide for making a release](#setup-guide-for-making-a-release)
 
 ## Compute environments
 
@@ -336,3 +337,18 @@ docker run -p 8888:8888 -d recommenders:cpu
 ```
 
 You can then open the Jupyter notebook server at http://localhost:8888
+
+## Setup guide for making a release
+
+The process of making a new release and publishing it to pypi is as follows:
+
+First make sure that the tag that you want to add, e.g. `0.6.0`, is added in [reco_utils.py/__init__.py](reco_utils.py/__init__.py). Follow the [contribution guideline](CONTRIBUTING.md) to add the change.
+
+1. Make sure that the code in main passes all the tests (unit and nightly tests).
+1. Create a tag with the version number: e.g. `git tag -a 0.6.0 -m "Recommenders 0.6.0"`.
+1. Push the tag to the remote server: `git push origin 0.6.0`.
+1. When the new tag is pushed, a release pipeline is executed. This pipeline runs all the tests again (unit, smoke and integration), 
+generates a wheel and a tar.gz which are uploaded to a [GitHub draft release](https://github.com/microsoft/recommenders/releases).
+1. Fill up the draft release with all the recent changes in the code.
+1. Download the wheel and tar.gz locally, these files shouldn't have any bug, since they passed all the tests.
+1. Publish the wheel and tar.gz to pypi: `twine upload ms-recommenders*`
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 2956a14a7b..f4fff9a297 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -75,6 +75,7 @@
         "cmake>=3.18.4.post1",
         "xlearn==0.40a1",
     ],
+    "dev": ["black>=18.6b4,<21", "pytest>=3.6.4"],
 }
 # for the brave of heart
 extras_require["all"] = list(set(sum([*extras_require.values()], [])))