How China’s Bank of Communications Achieved Industry‑Leading DevOps Maturity

Overview

Large enterprises have found that standardization and tool empowerment are key to success. The DevOps standards and a standards‑based continuous delivery pipeline can significantly improve quality, efficiency, and safety, enhancing market competitiveness.

Recent Evaluation Results

On December 26, 2022, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) announced the latest batch of DevOps series standard assessment results. Bank of Communications (BoC) participated with three projects: the New Fund Pension module, a cloud‑cross‑bank project, and the Welfare Medical product. All three projects passed the CAICT "R&D‑Operations Integration (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model" Continuous Delivery Level 3 assessment, indicating a leading domestic DevOps capability.

BoC now has six projects that have passed the Continuous Delivery standard assessment and one project that passed the DevSecOps standard assessment.

Interview with Liu Lei

Q: Please introduce yourself and the projects you evaluated.

Liu Lei, General Manager of BoC’s Software Development Center, thanked CAICT for recognizing the bank’s DevOps transformation achievements. BoC, a century‑old state‑owned commercial bank headquartered in Shanghai, has pursued digital transformation since 2002, advancing data consolidation, the “531” and “New 531” projects, and fintech initiatives.

The three evaluated projects are:

New Fund Pension module – builds personal pension investment fund functions, integrates with China Securities Depository & Clearing Corporation, and provides comprehensive pension services.

Enterprise Fund Service Cloud system – improves corporate fund operation efficiency, reduces costs, and mitigates risks through direct bank‑enterprise interfaces.

Welfare Medical product – a digital credit‑payment solution for insured users, offering online signing, payment, refund, and settlement services.

Q: How does passing the DevOps assessment feel?

Liu Lei expressed pride that all three projects achieved Level 3 Continuous Delivery, marking BoC’s DevOps capability as industry‑leading and validating the bank’s DevOps promotion and implementation work.

Q: Why did BoC join the DevOps standard assessment?

The DevOps maturity standard, led by CAICT, guides the integration of development, testing, and operations. Using the standard for gap analysis and benchmarking against best practices accelerates DevOps improvement.

Q: What benefits has the assessment brought?

At the organizational level, the assessment helped refine process systems, enhance the tool platform, and achieve end‑to‑end automation, improving monitoring and metric management. For project teams, the standard drove best‑practice adoption, reduced technical debt, and enabled a unified engineering workflow that automates the full build‑to‑release pipeline, boosting delivery speed and quality.

Q: Which metrics demonstrate the improvement?

Key metrics include:

Build success rate > 90%

Average of 5+ builds per day

Interface test coverage 100%

Integration defect resolution within 3 hours (fastest 30 minutes)

Average pipeline duration < 10 minutes

Q: What challenges were encountered?

Challenges included tight schedules with high‑priority requirements and the geographic and technical diversity of the three projects. The team addressed these by integrating improvement tasks into regular iterations, close cross‑team communication, and rapid platform adjustments.

Q: What are the next steps?

BoC plans to localize the DevOps standards, further enhance the DevOps tool platform, expand its adoption across the group, and align with the 14th‑5th Financial Technology plan to build an enterprise‑level DevOps platform supporting cloud‑native, automated continuous delivery.

Q: Outlook for DevOps?

Liu Lei highlighted that DevOps is essential for financial industry digital transformation, enabling end‑to‑end integration and visualization. The bank will continue to follow BizDevOps practices, adopt “minimum viable product” approaches, and stay engaged with emerging DevOps developments.

Industry Statistics

As of December 26, 2022, state‑owned banks have collectively participated in numerous DevOps maturity assessments, covering continuous delivery, technical operation, security, and tool evaluations.

About the DevOps Capability Maturity Model

The model, jointly developed by CAICT, the Cloud Computing Open Source Industry Alliance, leading internet companies, and major financial and telecom enterprises, is the first comprehensive DevOps standard worldwide. It was officially concluded by the ITU‑T in July 2020, becoming the first international DevOps standard.

The model covers process (agile management, continuous delivery, technical operation), application design, security & risk management, system & tools, business value management, collaborative development‑operations, and continuous testing.

Contact Information

China Academy of Information and Communications Technology – Liu Kailin Phone: 15650786171 (WeChat) Email: [email protected]

Efficient Operations Community – Wei Huanxin Phone: 18500255645 (WeChat) Email: [email protected]