I am no defender of agile as I have seen it implemented as a cargo cult. So yes, quality engineering can happen without it. However, the communication that can/

I am no defender of agile as I have seen it implemented as a cargo cult. So yes, quality engineering can happen without it. However, the communication that can/should/could be provided by agile is required by quality engineering. My first experience with seeing how effective this communication can be was before agile when a manager held short, goofy meetings once a week and we engineers somehow managed to ship, ship on time, and ship reasonable products.