China Postal Savings Bank’s DevOps Success: Lessons from the 2023 GOPS Conference

Standardization and tool empowerment are key to enterprise success, as demonstrated by large domestic and international companies.

The 20th GOPS Global Operations Conference was held in Shenzhen on April 7, 2023, jointly organized by GreatOPS and OOPSA, targeting technical staff from internet, finance, and telecom sectors to share advanced technology ideas and best practices.

At the conference, the China Academy of Information and Communications (CAICT) announced the latest batch of DevOps system and tool standard assessment results.

China Postal Savings Bank participated with its "Star Platform" project, which passed the CAICT "R&D Operations Integration (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model" assessments for the Test Data Management and Test Case and Plan Management modules at the excellent level, indicating a leading domestic position.

The bank also passed one DevSecOps standard assessment in this batch, bringing its total to nine CAICT DevOps standard assessments: three for continuous delivery, five for system and tool standards, and one for DevSecOps.

Interview Highlights

Q: Please introduce yourself, your enterprise, and the project you evaluated.

A (Hu Junfeng, General Manager, Software R&D Center): China Postal Savings Bank, one of the six major state‑owned banks, serves over 600 million personal customers through a "self‑operated + agency" model. We leverage fintech to drive high‑quality development, implementing DevOps and open‑source governance to enhance IT governance and become a trusted, innovative, and secure large‑scale retail bank.

Our "Star Platform" is an enterprise‑level test management platform that standardizes testing processes, provides full‑process test quality control, integrates testing tools, and consolidates test assets, forming an end‑to‑end data pipeline for version delivery.

The platform includes the Pisces subsystem for task creation and plan management, the Leo subsystem for requirement‑case mapping and defect tracking, and the Orion subsystem for unified test environment and data services.

Q: How do you feel about passing the system and tool standard assessment?

A: We are honored to pass the assessment, which provided valuable suggestions that helped us improve the "Star Platform"’s test planning, case management, and data management capabilities, and earned recognition from industry experts.

Q: How important is an end‑to‑end, integrated toolchain for DevOps implementation?

A: It is essential; a unified toolchain accelerates delivery, standardizes processes, and aligns development, testing, deployment, and operations, especially when tailored to the bank’s specific needs.

Q: What considerations did the bank have when participating in the assessment?

A: We focus on aligning with standards, benchmarking against best practices, and continuously optimizing our DevOps capabilities to enhance development efficiency.

Q: What changes resulted from the assessment?

A: We refined the full test management workflow, strengthened team cohesion, and built a more robust platform that supports comprehensive testing and faster delivery.

Q: What are the future plans for DevOps in testing?

A: We aim to build a DevTestOps continuous testing system that covers the entire product lifecycle, with standardized processes, reliable environments, integrated platforms, and real‑time monitoring.

Q: What is your view on the future development of DevOps?

A: DevOps will evolve into XOps, integrating business and IT through AIOps, BizDevOps, FinOps, and ArchOps, driving smarter, more efficient operations.

Statistics and Standards

As of April 7 2023, China Postal Savings Bank has passed nine CAICT DevOps standard assessments, including three continuous delivery, five system and tool, and one DevSecOps assessments.

The "R&D Operations Integration (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model" series standards, led by CAICT with contributions from major internet, finance, and telecom companies, are the most comprehensive and authoritative DevOps standards in China, endorsed by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and adopted by many leading enterprises.

In July 2020, the DevOps standard became the world’s first international DevOps standard, finalized by the ITU‑T.

The overall DevOps architecture includes processes (agile development, continuous delivery, technical operations), application design, security and risk management, system and tools, business value management, collaborative development and operations, and continuous testing.