How a Chinese Bank’s Wealth Management System Mastered DevOps Level‑3 Continuous Delivery

DevOps Level‑3 Continuous Delivery Achievement

On December 26, 2022, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) announced the latest batch of DevOps standard assessment results. The Agricultural Bank of China had nine system modules evaluated under the "R&D‑Operations Integrated (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model," covering eleven assessment items. The Wealth Management Customer Share Management System (FTA) successfully passed the Level‑3 Continuous Delivery standard.

At the "2022 GOLF+IT New Governance Leadership Forum" on January 6, 2023, CAICT officials presented the award to the bank.

System Overview

The system is the core liability‑side platform of the bank’s wealth management subsidiary. Its front‑end is built with the UDesk framework, while the back‑end uses the bank’s proprietary Taihang framework. It adopts a two‑site three‑center deployment model and integrates with the bank’s in‑house unified production‑operation platform for one‑click deployment, intelligent operation, and comprehensive monitoring.

Standardized Development Process

After receiving a requirement, the project manager schedules the production window and breaks the requirement into detailed items. Developers create feature branches, develop code, and perform unit testing. Code is merged into the release branch only after automated gate checks and manual peer review. After test admission, the testing team conducts functional testing and defect fixing. A change request is then created, and deployment proceeds according to the scheduled window, after which the next iteration begins.

Benefits and Metrics

Code quality improved through mandatory unit tests, compliance checks, and multi‑person code reviews.

Since the DevOps rollout, automated test pass rate reached 100%, unit‑test coverage increased by 59.7%, defect count dropped by 64%, and build success rate exceeded 90%.

Average build time decreased by 30%.

Test‑Left‑Shift Practices

Previously, development was completed before testing, leading to high communication costs and delayed defect detection. After adopting a test‑left‑shift approach, testers engage during requirement analysis, automated tests are embedded in the CI pipeline, and test environments are deployed with a single click, reducing coordination effort and improving test quality.

Automated Deployment and One‑Click Release

Prior to DevOps, each environment required manual configuration changes and separate packaging, resulting in high failure rates. Post‑DevOps, configuration is separated from code, a single artifact is used across development, test, validation, and production, and deployment follows the same automated process, achieving a 100% production deployment success rate.

Project Reflections

The successful assessment stems from strong team collaboration, adherence to standardized processes, and the early exposure of issues through pipeline gate checks, which dramatically increased deployment success and reduced last‑minute problems.

Conclusion

As a pilot DevOps project, the Wealth Management Customer Share Management System significantly enhanced development, testing, and operations automation, setting a solid foundation for broader DevOps adoption within the bank and contributing to its digital transformation.

DevOps Capability Maturity Model

The "R&D‑Operations Integrated (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model" was jointly developed by CAICT, the Cloud Computing Open Source Industry Alliance, the Efficient Operations Community, and leading internet companies. It is the first comprehensive DevOps series standard in China and has been adopted by many enterprises after being released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The model covers agile development management, continuous delivery, technical operations, application design, security, toolchains, business value management, and collaborative development‑operations.

Contact for Assessment

CAICT – Liu Kailin: 15650786171 (WeChat), [email protected]

GreatOps Community – Wei Huanxin: 18500255645 (WeChat), [email protected]