In the past six years or so since this was written, Greg Wilson has advocated gathering data on this and other programming related topics (watch http://vimeo.com/9270320 if you have an hour, or get a flavor for the arguments here http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/se-podcast-09/), and has compiled a book of essays (with research) on the topic: http://www.amazon.com/Making-Software-Really-Believe-ebook/d...

I haven't yet read the book, and so don't know it's conclusions, if any, on the various methodologies, but if you're curious about research in the area it would be a great start.

The other thing worth pointing out is that, while the Google Yegge describes in the essay might be different in 2012 than it was in 2006, it's still a different level of organization than even the average software development company, let alone a non-software company that happens to employ internal or contract developers. And Steve is writing about developing within Google.