Elul, Our Annual Retro
Elul, Our Annual Retro
This Dvar Torah was originally published in Torah && Tech, the weekly newsletter I publish together with my good friend Ben Greenberg. To get the weekly issue delivered straight to your inbox click here.
One of the core practices introduced by the Agile movement was the Retrospective (or “Retro” for short).
At set times (the end of the week, the end of an iteration, after finishing a project, etc.) the team gets together to discuss how things went.
There are probably as many ways to hold a retro as there are teams that are holding them. What they all have in common, though, is that they are a time to discuss what went wrong, what went right, and how the team can improve in the future.
Having regular retros is an integral part of having a healthy team that keeps growing and learning from its mistakes.
In our spiritual life as well, if we don’t set aside times to stop and take stock, we will find ourselves deteriorating quickly.
Every once in a while we need to take a break, look back, see what we could have done better, and make a plan to improve.
This coming Shabbat, we begin the month of Elul, the last month of the year, and the month where we prepare for the High Holidays.
Chassidic sources called the month of Elul “The Month Of Accounting.”
Just as our retros keep our teams healthy and ensure that we continue to grow, taking advantage of the month of Elul to introspect on the year and make resolutions on how we plan to improve next year will help us grow as people and as Jews.
Shanah Tova and Shabbat Shalom
Yechiel