How CITIC Bank Achieved Level‑3 DevOps Continuous Delivery: Key Lessons

According to a McKinsey study, technology companies succeed by focusing on standardization and tool empowerment, a principle that aligns with DevOps standards and continuous‑delivery pipelines.

2019 Operations Conference

On December 26, 2019, the Operations Conference was held in Beijing, organized by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) and the China Communications Standardization Association, with the TC608 Cloud Computing Standards and Open‑Source Promotion Committee as host. The event aimed to promote new operations technologies, share experiences, and accelerate industry development.

DevOps Standard Evaluation Results

The conference announced the sixth batch of evaluation results for the DevOps standard continuous‑delivery part. CITIC Bank successfully passed the level‑3 assessment for three projects, demonstrating a leading domestic capability in continuous delivery.

Projects Certified at Level‑3

New Personal Mobile Banking

Asset Custody Clearing System

Quick Collaboration Platform

Interview with CITIC Bank Leaders

Q: Why were three projects selected for the assessment? The team participated to “evaluate‑to‑improve.” Early 2019 marked the start of CITIC Bank’s DevOps and agile transformation. The three projects represent distinct domains: the mobile banking app demands rapid delivery; the collaboration platform supports branch‑level services with a unique development model; the asset‑custody system uses the bank’s unified development platform.

Q: What impact has the assessment had? Passing the assessment boosted team morale and validated the bank’s DevOps practices. The mobile banking team, with agile experience since 2016, felt confident, while the other teams are still strengthening their foundations. The assessment highlighted the need for organizational tools and team capabilities, prompting continuous improvement.

Q: How does the DevOps standard differ from other assessments? The DevOps standard emphasizes agile acceleration and tool support. Traditional pipelines could not meet the bank’s speed requirements, leading to the adoption of new pipelines, container‑based CI/CD tools, and self‑service resource provisioning, reducing resource request cycles from weeks to a single day.

Q: What are the 2020 plans for DevOps? The bank plans to expand DevOps pilots from nine projects to a larger scale, promote agile practices across product lines, and deepen integration of DevOps with business units. They aim to improve metrics, testing environments, and data management while addressing regulatory and security constraints.

Q: What benefits have been observed? Pilot projects saw an average 18% improvement in delivery efficiency, faster business value delivery, and heightened team confidence. The bank also established internal evaluation criteria and set goals for all pipelines to meet secondary standards.

Q: How has the data center been affected? The data center adopted automated, standardized cloud services, reducing delivery cycles from weeks to days or hours. It embraced a DevOps culture, breaking down silos between development and operations, and implemented automated platforms, CMDB governance, and infrastructure‑as‑code to support rapid provisioning.

Q: What is the outlook for DevOps? DevOps aims for fast, efficient, high‑quality business value delivery while fostering cultural and organizational excellence. In the era of digital transformation and cloud adoption, DevOps—and its future evolution toward AIOps—will be essential for enterprises across industries.

About the Global DevOps Standard

The world’s first DevOps standard, the "Research‑Operation Integration (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model," was led by CAICT in collaboration with the Cloud Computing Open‑Source Industry Alliance, the Efficient Operations Community, Google, BATJ, Tsinghua University, Nanjing University, and top industry experts. It has been officially adopted by ITU‑T and the China Communications Standardization Association.

Previous enterprises that passed the CAICT DevOps continuous‑delivery maturity assessment include Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Bank of China, Huatai Securities, Zhejiang Mobile, Tencent, China Merchants Bank, Guangdong Mobile, Beijing Mobile, Qunar, Zhengzhou Bank, and Shenzhou Taiyue.