In my sibling response I mentioned that just 5 articles have been truly valuable. In no particular order:

DOI: 10.1109/MC.2003.1204375 ; "Iterative and Incremental Development: A Brief History"

DOI: 10.1109/AGILE.2013.17 ; "Continuous Delivery? Easy! Just Change Everything (Well, Maybe It Is Not That Easy)"

DOI (with link): https://doi.org/10.1002/spip.344 ; "The agile professional culture: A source of agile quality" [the article itself is pretty light on useful material but it contains some of the strongest individual arguments I've seen, all in one package]

Direct PDF link: https://www.futureworksconsulting.com/perch/resources/pdfs/t... [the valuable material is on the first page]

DOI: 10.1.1.428.5843 ; "Evaluation of Quality AssuranceFactorsinAgile Methodologies"

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There are plenty of other reports and papers on the topics, but they bring very little to the table on their own. These five have provided me with a decent starting point. The references to findings and reports from 1950's are in the first one, btw.

Thank you!

I'll dig out the archive when back at the office, next week. There is plenty of research into iterative/agile development, slightly less into quality, and surprisingly little on accountability.

The most valuable sources have been just 5 (yes, five) research papers / reports. Luckily they sport citations, but sadly I haven't poured over more than a fraction of them so far.