Over the past few years, the airwaves have been flooded with commercials for investment-support software. Do your research with us, they promise, and you can make scads of money in the stock market. How could we test such a product? These products provide several capabilities. For example, they estimate the value or direction of change of individual stocks or the market as a whole, and they suggest trading strategies that tell you whether to buy, hold, or sell. Every valuation rule and every strategy is a feature. We can test the implementation of these features, but the greater risks lie in the accuracy of the underlying models. If you execute the wrong trades perfectly, you will lose money. That's not a useful feature, no matter how well implemented.

Test automation engineers are inevitably confronted with the difficult challenge of testing a screen containing hundreds–if not thousands–of data values. Designing an approach to interact with this complex data can be a nightmare, often resulting in countless programming loops that navigate through volumes of data. Greg Paskal shares an innovative way to approach these automation challenges by breaking the problem into its logical parts. First, understand the data and how to organize it using the Complex Data Methodology, and second, execute common programmatic tasks resulting in shorter automation run times. This approach can be applied to Web and client systems, and adapted easily to other technologies. Automators scripting in languages such as VB Script will find this approach innovative, breaking down automation challenges to optimize performance while still producing meaningful results.

Some people thrive on challenges; others struggle daily to deal with them. Handled well, challenges can make us stronger, more passionate, and more determined to succeed. Lloyd Roden describes the top software testing challenges facing many of us today and explores how we can respond in a positive, constructive way. One challenge Lloyd often sees is identifying and eliminating metrics that deceive. While we (hopefully) do not set out to lie with our metrics, we must endeavor to employ metrics that have significance, integrity, and operational value. Another challenge test leaders face is providing reports that are clear, accurate, relevant and tailored to the recipient. A third challenge is convincing test managers to actually test regularly to attain credibility and respect with the team they are leading.

Lightning Talks have been a very popular part of many STAR conferences throughout the years. If you're not familiar with the concept, a Lightning Talk session consists of a series of five-minute talks by different presenters within one presentation period. For the speakers, Lightning Talks are the opportunity to deliver their single biggest-bang-for-the-buck idea in a rapid-fire presentation. And now, lightning has struck the STAR keynote presentations. Some of the experts in testing-James Bach, Jon Bach, Michael Bolton, Dawn Cannan, Dale Emery, Bob Galen, Jonathan Kohl, Randy Rice, Lloyd Roden, and Rob Sabourin-will each step up to the podium and give you their best shot of lightning. With no time to dither or vacillate-and hemming and hawing forbidden-you'll get ten keynote presentations for the price of one and have some fun at the same time.