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

Talk Description

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.

Follow

Mr Stephen P Platten

Principal Consultant

I am an award winning (European Software Testing awards, TESTA) tester and QA, with a passion to the best version of myself:

"The best manager, tester, and coach I can be, to be "The Stoic Tester."

Ambassador