How CITIC Securities Boosted Efficiency with DevOps: A Deep Dive into Their Level‑3 Assessment

Enterprise practices and data show that standardization and tool empowerment are key to success. The DevOps standard and a continuous delivery pipeline platform can improve software development quality and efficiency, making enterprises faster, more flexible, and more competitive.

On September 9, 2021, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) released the 13th batch of DevOps continuous delivery assessment results. CITIC Securities Co., Ltd. (referred to as “CITIC Securities”) participated with its Managed Outsourcing Service Platform project, which passed the Level‑3 continuous delivery assessment of the "R&D Operations Integration (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model" conducted by CAICT. CITIC Securities became the first securities firm in North China to achieve Level‑3.

Interview with Xiao Gang, Executive Committee Member, Chief Information Officer and Administrative Head of CITIC Securities.

Q: Please introduce your company and the project involved in the assessment. CITIC Securities, established on November 2, 2005, is a nationally approved large comprehensive securities company with a strong reputation in providing financial services. The Managed Outsourcing Service Platform is the core system for its outsourcing business, covering product introduction, establishment, operation, and settlement, serving institutional clients. The platform adopts a micro‑service framework combined with a R&D efficiency platform, integrating development, testing, and operations to elevate development efficiency.

Q: Congratulations on passing the Level‑3 DevOps continuous delivery assessment. How does it feel? Xiao Gang said the project’s success reflects the company’s growing IT scale and higher demands for support and delivery speed. Since 2019, CITIC Securities launched a DevOps platform to deepen IT governance, improve development quality, and achieve agile delivery. The assessment validates their end‑to‑end automated value delivery, enhancing integration of development, testing, and operations, improving efficiency, reducing costs, and supporting digital transformation.

Q: Why did CITIC Securities decide to join the DevOps standard assessment? To meet new challenges of digitalization, information security, business transformation, and architectural evolution, the company aimed to enhance agile delivery capability, respond quickly to business changes, and improve IT service quality through the assessment.

Q: What benefits did the assessment bring to the enterprise and the team? The assessment helped transition from traditional IT to distributed, cloud‑native fintech platforms, promoting agile development, enhancing autonomous R&D, and improving business responsiveness. The project improved technical architecture, development efficiency, and service governance, significantly boosting the team’s agile development capability.

Q: Which data indicators reflect the project’s improvement?

Q: What are the IT system’s characteristics and design for the project? The platform is built on a micro‑service architecture with service‑oriented and containerized deployment. Lacking mature agile management, CI/CD pipelines, and security tools, the project served as a pilot to optimize processes, enhance automation, and support digital transformation.

Q: Was the assessment process smooth? What difficulties were encountered and how were they solved? Early challenges included weak DevOps theory among team members and insufficient technical reserves. The company recruited experts, provided extensive training, clarified development workflows, and introduced advanced DevOps tools with strong leadership support, leading to successful implementation.

Q: What are the biggest gains and next steps for DevOps at CITIC Securities? The assessment resulted in a comprehensive integration of foundational tools, creation of a R&D efficiency platform, and significant improvements in development, testing, security, and operations integration. The team also cultivated DevOps talent and plans to continue advancing continuous development capabilities.

Q: What is your view on the future of DevOps? DevOps is a key factor for successful digital transformation, unifying requirements, development, testing, deployment, and operations. It enables agile development, continuous delivery, and seamless application operation, helping enterprises improve IT efficiency while delivering high‑quality software rapidly.

DevOps Capability Maturity Model Overview

The "R&D Operations Integration (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model" series of standards were led by CAICT with participation from top internet companies, financial, and telecom enterprises. It is the first domestic and international DevOps standard, officially released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and recognized by the ITU‑T in July 2020. The assessment framework covers agile development management, continuous delivery, technical operations, application design, security and risk management, and tooling.

Statistics show the number of securities firms and projects that have participated in the DevOps maturity model assessment, highlighting the growing adoption of DevOps standards across the industry.