How CICC’s Four Projects Earned Top‑Tier DevOps Certification and Accelerated Delivery

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

Assessment Results

On April 26, 2022, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology announced the 17th batch of DevOps continuous‑delivery assessment results. China International Capital Corp. (CICC) submitted four projects – the CICC Equity Incentive Management Platform, the Luban Digital Employee Service Platform, the CICC Institutional Client Service Platform (CICSP), and the CICC Wealth‑Management Core System (AIIS) – all of which passed the Level‑3 continuous‑delivery assessment of the R&D Operations Integration (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model , reaching a domestic leading level. CICC is the first securities‑industry company to have four projects pass the DevOps assessment in a single batch.

Interview Highlights

Q: Please introduce yourself, your company, and the projects you evaluated. CIO Cheng Long explained that CICC, founded in 1995 and listed in Hong Kong in 2015, has grown to a ten‑thousand‑employee listed company. To support its digital transformation, the IT department launched a “point‑to‑area, evaluation‑driven improvement” strategy, selecting four diverse projects, including the AIIS wealth‑management core system, the Luban RPA management platform, the ESOP equity‑incentive platform, and the CICSP institutional client service platform.

Q: How does passing the Level‑3 continuous‑delivery assessment feel? Cheng said the achievement reflects comprehensive enhancements in organizational standards, platform and tool construction, engineering practice, agile team management, collaboration, and demand‑delivery management, elevating the IT department to a new level of capability.

Q: Why did you decide to join the DevOps assessment? He noted that efficient IT infrastructure is a cornerstone of digital transformation, and aligning with the authoritative DevOps Level‑3 standard drives continuous improvement through agile operations, automation, engineering practice, and quality management.

Q: What benefits has the assessment brought to CICC? Executive Vice‑President Ye Ming‑deng highlighted that the assessment proved CICC’s top‑tier project delivery capability, shortened demand‑to‑delivery cycles from about a month to under two weeks (often multiple deliveries per week), reduced CI response time from half a day to under ten minutes, cut build‑deploy time from hours to minutes, increased release frequency threefold, achieved >95% automatic build success, and saved over 12 person‑months of effort.

Q: What challenges did you face during the assessment? Vice‑President Guan Yan‑yan described the difficulty of evaluating four heterogeneous projects simultaneously while balancing daily production pressure with DevOps improvement work. The organization responded by concentrating resources on platform and tool optimization, establishing unified standards, and encouraging teams to view the assessment as a growth opportunity.

Q: What data indicators demonstrate the improvement? Guan reported demand‑cycle reduction, CI response time under ten minutes, build‑deploy time in minutes, release frequency tripled, automatic build success >95%, daily builds >20, and cost savings of 12 person‑months.

DevOps Standards Overview

The R&D Operations Integration (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model was jointly developed by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, the Cloud Computing Open‑Source Alliance, the Efficient Operations Community, BATJ, and leading financial, telecom, and internet enterprises. It is the first domestic and international DevOps series standard, recognized by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and adopted by many leading firms. The model covers agile development management, continuous delivery, technical operations, application design, security and risk management, and system/tool evaluation.

Since July 2020, the DevOps standard has been ratified by the United Nations‑affiliated ITU‑T, becoming the world’s first international DevOps standard.

Industry Participation

To date, 52 leading enterprises across 136 projects have participated in the DevOps Capability Maturity Model assessment, including major state‑owned banks, joint‑stock banks, city commercial banks, internet firms, securities, insurance, and communications companies. The securities industry, represented by CICC, is among the participants.