DevOps Case Study: ‘Small Team, Big Backend’ Organizational Structure in the Rapid Construction of Huoshenshan and Leishenshan Hospitals

The COVID‑19 outbreak demanded the ultra‑fast construction of large infectious‑disease hospitals, with Huoshenshan and Leishenshan built in just ten days to provide isolation, negative‑pressure wards, and comprehensive medical facilities.

Viewing the project through a DevOps lens, the authors describe a “small team, big backend” organization: compact front‑line teams focused on execution, backed by a powerful, centrally coordinated backend that supplies resources, logistics, and technical support.

The model draws parallels to historical military unit structures that shrink front‑line size while expanding backend capabilities, and to Alibaba’s 2015 “small front‑end + big middle‑platform” architecture, both aiming for agility, flat management, and rapid response.

Government directives mobilized state‑owned enterprises, BIM design teams, and industry leaders within hours; Beijing Zhongyuan delivered design drafts in 78 minutes, while national design institutes and construction firms formed a nationwide public‑welfare project, ensuring seamless cross‑disciplinary collaboration.

This networked, mesh‑like structure eliminated traditional departmental walls, offering advantages such as high moral alignment under national duty, tight schedule adherence, transparent information sharing, flat hierarchy, end‑to‑end responsibility, abundant resources, and strong external supervision (e.g., 60 million‑yuan cloud monitoring).

The article is the first of a four‑part series that will further explore project planning, value‑stream efficiency, technical guarantees, and comprehensive operations, inviting readers to follow the continued DevOps case study series.