Perfect Is The Enemy Of Done

Ever been in a standup and heard something like this - "I could complete this task but I'd like to re-factor the code one more time"? What about this one - "All the acceptance criteria are met so I could move this story to done, but I won't because there are a couple of additional cases I think it should handle as well... So I'll add a couple of extra tasks and work on them today"? What about this - "The feature is complete but we can't put it in production yet... It really needs to be bundled with that other feature to make an impact in the market" ? Or this - "The MVP is done but we have decided to hold off on releasing it to market because it's not the complete, fully featured solution our customers would expect"? Or this - "We have decided to delay the release by another couple of sprints to add in some additional features that will enhance the customer experience some more"?

One description of agile is "the art of getting things done". Done is a great thing to aim for. Done means delivering value, making a difference, achievement. Unfortunately, a lot of the time we are pretty bad at it. Done has a mortal enemy that tries to prevent us from ever reaching Done. It continually moves Done further and further away from us. We take one step towards Done and its mortal enemy moves Done two steps further away. The name of this mortal enemy? Perfection.