> Elementary preparations consist of those things whereof one is constantly in need, which may be prepared in advance, and which are kept available for use at a moment's notice.

I think this one sentence much better describes what I feel the spirit of mise en place is in regards to software. Things which you need, which may be prepared in advance. When I think of it this way, I am reminded of the many little scripts, aliases, editor plugins, configuration settings, etc. that I have accrued over the course of my day job that make it easy to do the things I have to do many times per day. For example, our product can be launched in several different configurations, so I have a script that takes a build directory and a configuration parameter and sets up everything so it's launched exactly as it should be; I also have a bunch of GDB scripts to set up the environment and to display data in a meaningful fashion; and many more things like that. Unlike in cooking however, once I have set up some aspect of my msie en place, it stays that way forever - it's like if you cut the peppers once and you have an infinite bucket of cut peppers. When looked at that way, I think it makes sense to make your mise en place as you go, since you don't really know what you need before you need it. Obviously a lot of trivial things should be set up beforehand and shared with the team, but every programmer has a slightly different workflow, so it pays to write some simple little tools for yourself when you come to need them and put them in your mise en place.