diff --git a/docs/tooling/cli/02-build-system.md b/docs/tooling/cli/02-build-system.md
index dfd95ae6eb..96c46bed6a 100644
--- a/docs/tooling/cli/02-build-system.md
+++ b/docs/tooling/cli/02-build-system.md
@@ -364,22 +364,19 @@ load performance.
 
 ### Backend Development
 
-The backend development bundling is also based on Webpack, but rather than
-starting up a web server, the backend is started up using the
-[`RunScriptWebpackPlugin`](https://www.npmjs.com/package/run-script-webpack-plugin).
-The reason for using Webpack for development of the backend is both that it is a
-convenient way to handle transpilation of a large set of packages, as well us
-allowing us to use hot module replacement and maintaining state while reloading
-individual backend modules. This is particularly useful when running the backend
-with in-memory SQLite as the database choice.
+The backend development setup does not use any bundling process. It runs a
+Node.js process directly, with only-the-fly transpilation from TypeScript to
+JavaScript. The transpilation is done with a custom transform based on
+[SWC](https://swc.rs/).
 
-Except for executing in Node.js rather than a web server, the backend
-development bundling configuration is quite similar to the frontend one. It
-shares most of the Webpack configuration, including the transpilation setup.
-Some differences are that it does not inject any environment variables or node
-module fallbacks, and it uses
-[`webpack-node-externals`](https://www.npmjs.com/package/webpack-node-externals)
-to avoid bundling in dependency modules.
+During development the backend Node.js process will restart whenever there is a
+change to the source code. This means that any in-memory data will be lost. In
+order to store data between restarts, the backend process has an IPC channel
+available to store and restore data from the parent CLI process. The primary
+purpose of this, which is already built-in, is to restore the contents of
+databases when using SQLite for development. You can also use it for your own
+purposes too, with the `DevDataStore` utility exported from the
+`@backstage/backend-dev-utils` package.
 
 If you want to inspect the running Node.js process, the `--inspect` and
 `--inspect-brk` flags can be used, as they will be passed through as options to