Mission Cycles are fragments of time where the progress of Missions is evaluated and decisions are made. Mission Cycles are the equivalent to Sprints in Scrum.
The minimum duration of a Mission Cycle is 1 week. Smaller cycle times may introduce waste in managing the process and too frequent to produce achievable outcomes.
The maximum duration of a Mission Cycle is 6 weeks. Investing in bigger cycle times can jeopardise the agility of an effort, where the team should be focusing on producing frequent results that can be evaluated through short iterations.
Agile Squads define only two ceremonies, leaving the freedom for more, based on the self-organizing nature of the Squads or company structures.
The first ceremony is the Mission Briefing, taking place at the beginning of a Mission Cycle. During the briefing session, the Product Squad holds a presentation to the cycle's new Missions and/or a status update of existing Missions that need to expand to the next cycle, until the expected outcome is met. At the end of the Briefing session, Hero and Guardian Squads must be formed or restructured based on the current situation.
The second ceremony is the Mission Debriefing, taking place at the end of a Cycle. During the debriefing session, Squads share their progress, discuss about important findings from their journey and communicate any important information that can be used as a pre-work for the next Cycle.