Alan Cooper gives a powerhouse performance on the importance of reclaiming quality as a key deliverable of software development in this excellent keynote presentation:

An Insurgency of Quality

Some of the key points I took from watching this video are:

1. Modern management is industrial in outlook.
2. Software development is a post-industrial activity, so software projects and the managers running them often have completely different World views.
3. You cannot reduce cost of software development, only the quality.
4. Difficult to measure ROI (Return On Investment) of software development.
5. Developers cannot be managed in the traditional sense, only facilitated.
6. Viewing software development as a craft (not an industry).
7. Software developers respect competence, not authority.
8. Combination of Agile Methods for design, and RUP (Rational Unified Process) for implementation.
9. Document your success!

It is a thought provoking presentation well worth your time.

---

Updated 2020 : note the original video link I posted here in 2008 is dead, so I have updated the video link to point to a recording of the same talk on Vimeo.