How China Railway Investment Group Built a Winning Organization‑Level DevOps Platform

Recent directives from the People’s Bank of China, the State Administration for Market Regulation, the China Securities Regulatory Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and other agencies have highlighted DevOps and BizDevOps as core capabilities for digital transformation, urging enterprises to adopt task‑oriented, cross‑departmental teams and demand‑driven development models.

Gartner predicts DevOps will reach production‑mature status between 2024‑2027, and in October 2023 the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) released an organization‑level DevOps assessment based on the "DevOps Capability Maturity Model" to help enterprises improve technology management and governance.

On September 26, 2025, at the 2025 XOps Industry Ecosystem Innovation Forum in Beijing, CAICT announced the dual certification results of the ITU DevOps International Standard and the domestic DevOps Standard. China Railway Investment Group (CRIG) successfully passed both assessments, achieving a Level‑4 maturity in project management, build and CI, pipeline, and static application security testing.

Q&A

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

CRIG is a wholly‑owned subsidiary of China State Railway Group, responsible for rail investment, capital operation, and industry innovation. The evaluated project is the "Integrated Management Platform for Informationization Projects," which addresses project‑management pain points and provides demand management, continuous delivery, pipeline, and security control for the group and its subsidiaries.

Q: What strategic significance does a unified, efficient organization‑level DevOps platform have for improving overall R&D efficiency and business agility?

The platform connects demand, development, testing, and deployment across large railway non‑transport business systems, enabling standardized information‑technology construction, rapid response to business needs, and driving both technological and organizational agility.

Q: What core business or technical needs drove your decision to invest in such a platform?

Extensive feasibility studies revealed needs for standardized processes, sustainable delivery models, enhanced R&D and security efficiency, end‑to‑end security, and talent development. Adopting DevOps standards was seen as the proven path to improve IT quality and efficiency.

Q: What are your next planning or optimization directions for the platform?

Future work will focus on continuous innovation of delivery models, enhancing platform adaptability, deepening DevSecOps integration, improving metric transparency, establishing data‑driven decision‑making, and exploring AI applications in testing and code quality.

Q: How has the platform’s deployment changed the enterprise?

The platform introduced end‑to‑end automated pipelines, standardized processes, objective efficiency metrics, quality gates, and security checks, resulting in shortened delivery cycles, reduced defect rates, and more stable releases.

Q: What challenges did you face during platform construction and promotion, and how were they overcome?

Challenges included fragmented project management, lack of unified tools, and inconsistent standards. Solutions involved comprehensive feasibility research, publishing a "DevOps Implementation Guide," pilot projects with iterative optimization, and fostering a culture of cross‑team collaboration.

Q: What successful experiences can you share?

Key successes were: (1) establishing standards first, (2) using pilot‑then‑scale strategy, and (3) focusing on security and quality baselines to drive adoption.