Quality in the RAF and what it taught me about testing - Discipline, risk and assurance across domains

I am an Ex Royal Air Force (RAF) engineer, and that is the first place I ever came across the word "Quality". 

I quickly learnt as an aircraft engineer how important that concept was and the real-world implications of getting quality wrong. I learnt that in the RAF, “quality” didn’t mean metrics, dashboards, or KPIs. It meant survival, potential loss of life, and it meant the aircraft I worked on had to take off and land safely every single time — because if something went wrong, people didn’t just lose data or money; they could lose their lives.

Those experiences shaped how I see quality in software testing. The stakes are different now, but the principles are the same. Whether you’re maintaining a jet or deploying tests to a new product, the way you approach risk as a tester is defined by your discipline, and knowing your accountability determines the outcome.

This talk explores the parallels between the lessons I learnt in the RAF and my current work — this is not intended as a romanticised “military precision” way of testing, but a practical, easy-to-adapt approach. The RAF taught me that quality isn’t about perfection. It’s about control, traceability, and mindset. It’s about knowing why we follow procedures, not just that we do.