The Done Contract: How Defining Success Upfront Breaks the Perfectionism Cycle

Perfectionist engineers often abandon projects because they never define what 'done' actually means. By writing a simple contract before writing code—specifying exactly what success looks like—the author discovered she could finally ship instead of endlessly refactor. This shift from 'what should I build next?' to 'am I done yet?' reframes software development from infinite iteration toward delivering on a deliberate promise.