How China Construction Bank’s FinTech Arm Earned Top Marks in the National DevOps Standard

Standardization and tool empowerment are key to enterprise success, and a DevOps‑based continuous delivery pipeline can dramatically improve software development efficiency and competitiveness.

On September 9, 2021, the China Academy of Information and Communications (CAICT) announced the results of its DevOps standard system and tool evaluation. JiAnXin FinTech’s YaoGuang‑Agile Development Platform participated in the first national assessment of the "Research and Development Operations Integration (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model" and received an excellent rating, indicating a leading domestic level.

We interviewed Li Xiaodun, President of the Basic Technology Center, Shu Zhan, Chief Engineer, and Li Zhuo, General Manager of the Smart Agile Development Department to share their DevOps practice experience.

Interview Highlights

Li Xiaodun: JiAnXin FinTech, a fintech subsidiary of China Construction Bank, builds its core capabilities on the bank’s next‑generation core system, leveraging AI, blockchain, cloud computing, big data, and quantum computing. The YaoGuang‑Agile Development Platform supports the entire R&D lifecycle, offering collaborative development, DevOps toolchains, low‑code development, and metrics to boost efficiency and agile transformation.

The platform is part of a broader technology middle‑platform strategy that includes container cloud, distributed micro‑services, AI, mobile, big data, and blockchain platforms, each named after a star in the “Big Dipper”.

Li Xiaodun on the evaluation: The team is delighted to pass the first national DevOps tool standard assessment, thanking CAICT experts for their guidance. The evaluation confirms the platform’s maturity and reinforces the commitment to continuous improvement.

Li Xiaodun on the future of DevOps: In a competitive market, enterprises must deliver high‑quality products quickly and cost‑effectively. A complete R&D‑operations system and intelligent platforms are essential. DevOps will become more integrated and intelligent, driven by container cloud, AI, and big data, supporting richer toolchains and seamless hand‑off between development and operations.

Shu Zhan: An end‑to‑end, process‑driven toolchain is crucial for DevOps adoption, improving delivery efficiency, quality, and reducing complexity for bank‑wide rollout.

Shu Zhan on evaluation considerations: Participation allowed benchmarking against industry peers, identifying gaps, and accelerating platform capabilities to a leading domestic level.

Shu Zhan on outcomes: The assessment validated the pipeline’s robustness, enhanced team collaboration, and streamlined the full lifecycle from demand to production.

Li Zhuo: Post‑evaluation, the pipeline became more stable, standardized, and user‑friendly, featuring custom function encapsulation, versioned scripts, and visualized process information.

The evaluated pipeline follows a product‑oriented design, supporting multiple scenarios, tech stacks, and high configurability, with rich UI configurations and script‑based tasks to meet diverse project needs.

Challenges during the assessment, such as management coordination and technical hurdles, were overcome through teamwork, achieving the expected rating.

Future plans include scaling the successful case across the entire bank, extending capabilities for emerging technologies, and sharing best practices to drive digital transformation and IT automation.

DevOps Capability Maturity Model

The "Research and Development Operations Integration (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model" series of standards were jointly developed by CAICT, the Cloud Computing Open Source Industry Alliance, the Efficient Operations Community, BATJ, and major financial and telecom enterprises. The standards, released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, have been adopted by many leading firms.

The DevOps standard evaluation covers agile development management, continuous delivery, technical operations, application design, security and risk management, and system and tool aspects. In July 2020, the DevOps standard was also finalized by the ITU‑T, becoming the world’s first international DevOps standard.

For further information on the DevOps standard evaluation, contact CAICT (Liu Kailing, phone 156 5078 6171, email [email protected]) or the Efficient Operations Community (Dong Hui, phone 185 1511 5139, email [email protected]).