How Chinese Banks Are Accelerating DevOps Maturity in 2024

Overview of DevOps Adoption in Chinese Banking

Amid the broader wave of digital transformation, enterprises are turning to DevOps to boost IT efficiency. The "China DevOps Status Survey Report (2023)" shows that in 2023 Chinese DevOps transformation continued, with enterprises strengthening agile and continuous delivery capabilities and achieving higher maturity levels; about 60% of enterprises have reached a comprehensive DevOps maturity.

DevOps Capability Maturity Model

The China Information and Communications Research Institute (CAICT) leads the "Research and Development Operations Integration (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model" series of standards, which were formalized as an international DevOps standard (ITU‑T Y.3525) in July 2020. Since the first assessments in 2018, the model has been applied for six years, covering more than 20 industries, with a total of 102 enterprises completing 351 DevOps standard assessments by early 2024.

Bank Participation and Assessment Results

Seven joint‑stock banks—China Merchants Bank, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, CITIC Bank, China Minsheng Bank, China Everbright Bank, Ping An Bank and Zheshang Bank—have collectively completed 63 assessments across 7 banks.

Notably, China Merchants Bank, CITIC Bank, Ping An Bank and Minsheng Bank each passed three types of standard assessments, and China Merchants Bank became the first financial institution to pass the BizDevOps standard assessment and the most prolific in continuous delivery assessments.

Continuous Delivery (Standard 3) Compliance

China Merchants Bank completed 25 projects under this standard, emphasizing improved developer experience, streamlined toolchains, automated processes and a cultural shift toward agile, efficient development.

CITIC Bank evaluated three projects: a new personal mobile banking system, a rapid collaboration platform upgrade, and an asset custody clearing system, highlighting challenges in decoupling architecture and the role of container‑based pipelines.

China Minsheng Bank presented its Open Platform, built on a container cloud with micro‑service architecture, supporting millions of daily accesses.

Shanghai Pudong Development Bank assessed 13 projects, ranging from internet loan products to micro‑service platforms, emphasizing skill development, automated testing and a newly established DevOps measurement system.

China Everbright Bank evaluated two projects—a Java‑based POIN development platform and a cash‑management cloud service—showcasing metrics such as 60 daily builds, >90% success rate and rapid build‑fix cycles.

Zheshang Bank assessed its Industry‑Chain Financial Service Platform, noting reductions in delivery cycles, faster builds, higher code quality and lower production incidents.

Technical Operations (Standard 4) Compliance

China Minsheng Bank introduced a centralized operations processing system built on workflow and rule engines, automating and standardizing back‑office tasks across settlement, credit, finance, warehousing, account opening, remote banking and more.

Security and Risk Management (Standard 6) Compliance

Ping An Bank evaluated its Intelligent Due Diligence System, integrating Starlink and DevSecOps practices to embed security throughout the development lifecycle, ensuring “requirement‑driven detection” across all stages.

System and Tools (Standard 8) Compliance

Ping An Bank also assessed the Starlink Development‑Operations Integrated Platform, which provides end‑to‑end value‑stream delivery, automated pipelines, security baselines and fine‑grained performance metrics.

BizDevOps (Standard 9) Compliance

China Merchants Bank passed the BizDevOps assessment for its "Lean Star – Demand Space" project, improving demand‑to‑value flow, aligning business and IT, and standardizing processes and tools.

Efficiency Measurement (Standard 12) Compliance

Various banks reported improvements in efficiency metrics such as reduced build times, higher build success rates and faster issue resolution, supported by the Kepler performance module of the Starlink platform.

About the DevOps Capability Maturity Model

The model, jointly developed by CAICT, the Cloud Computing Open Source Industry Alliance, the Efficient Operations Community, BATJ and leading financial, telecom and internet enterprises, is one of the most comprehensive and authoritative DevOps standards worldwide. It was officially concluded as a global DevOps standard by the United Nations‑affiliated ITU‑T in July 2020. The overall architecture covers processes (agile development management, continuous delivery, technical operations), application design, security and risk management, system and tools, business value management, collaborative development‑operations, continuous testing, efficiency measurement, platform engineering, and system reliability and continuity engineering.