Drs. Erik van Veenendaal CISA graduated at the University of Tilburg in Business Economics. He has been working as a practitioner and manager in the IT-industry since 1987. After a career in software development, he moved to the area of software quality, where he specializes in software testing.

As a test manager and test consultant he has been involved in a great number and variety of projects. He has implemented structured testing and reviews and inspections, and as a consultant has contributed to many test process improvement projects. He worked for Sogeti as manager of operations and was one the core developers of the TMap testing methodology. He is the author of numerous papers and a number of books on testing and software quality, including the best-sellers 'Test Maturity Model integration (TMMi)' and 'ISTQB Foundations in Software Testing'.

Erik van Veenendaal is the founder of Improve Quality Services ltd., a company that provides consultancy and training services in the areas of testing, requirements engineering and quality management. He has been the company director for over 12 years. Within this period Improve Quality Services became a leading testing company in The Netherlands focused on innovative and high quality testing services. Customers are especially in the areas of embedded software (e.g. Philips, Océ en Assembléon) and in the finance domain (e.g. Rabobank, ING and Triodos Bank). Improve Quality Services is market leader for test training in The Netherlands both in terms of quantity and quality.

Nowadays he is occupied as an independent consultant doing consultancy, training, publications and presentations within the testing and quality management domain. In addition he is actively involved in the TMMi Foundation, International Software Testing Qualifications Board and the IREB organization.

Erik was the first person to receive the ISEB Practitioner certificate with distinction and is also a Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA). He is a regular speaker both at national and international testing conferences and a leading international (ISTQB accredited) trainer in the field of software testing. Erik has also been a senior lecturer at the Eindhoven University of Technology, Faculty of Technology Management for almost ten years.

From 2005 - 2009 he was vice-president of the International Software Testing Qualification Board (ISTQB). For many years, he was the editor of the ISTQB "Standard Glossary of terms used in Software Testing" en a member of the editorial board of Testing Experience. Erik is a board member of the TMMi Foundation and editor/author of the TMMi model.

For his major contribution to the field of testing, Erik received the "European Testing Excellence Award" in December, 2007 and in the "ISTQB International Testing Excellence Award" in October, 2015.