How FAW‑Volkswagen Reached Top‑Tier DevOps Continuous Delivery: Practices, Metrics & Lessons

Large enterprises worldwide have found that standardization and tool empowerment are key to success; the DevOps standards and the CAICT DevOps continuous delivery pipeline platform can significantly improve quality, efficiency, safety, and agility, boosting market competitiveness.

On December 15, 2023, the GOLF+ IT New Governance Leadership Forum in Beijing announced the latest batch of DevOps and AIOps standard assessment results.

FAW‑Volkswagen participated with two projects: the OTD Order Delivery Management Platform and the Volkswagen Brand Dealer Multi‑Function Ecosystem Platform, both passing the CAICT "DevOps Capability Maturity Model – Continuous Delivery Level 3" assessment, marking the company as a domestic leader and the first automotive firm to achieve this evaluation.

Q: Please introduce your company and the projects you evaluated.

Dou Hengyan (Director, Management Services): FAW‑Volkswagen, a joint venture of FAW Group, Volkswagen AG, Audi AG, and Volkswagen (China), operates the Audi, Volkswagen, and Jetta brands. The OTD platform centralizes order customization, tracking, and data‑driven delivery monitoring, while the Dealer Ecosystem Platform (MEP) integrates the entire dealer lifecycle, enabling B2B2C collaboration, real‑time customer response, and a data‑driven marketing ecosystem.

Q: How did you feel after achieving the DevOps Level 3 assessment?

Dou: We appreciate the CAICT experts’ scientific evaluation and guidance, which validated our continuous delivery capabilities and positioned us as the first automotive company in China to pass this assessment.

Q: Why did you decide to join the DevOps assessment?

Dou: Since 2021 we launched a company‑wide digital transformation; recognizing the importance of standards, we joined the CAICT‑led assessment to promote learning, practice, and improvement.

Q: What benefits has the assessment brought to your enterprise?

Guo Cheng (Minister, IT Development): It helped us build an organization‑level efficiency platform that links requirement, development, testing, build, and release, automates metric collection, and provides unified visual dashboards, laying a solid foundation for DevOps standardization.

Key performance improvements include: automated build success rate >90%, average pipeline duration <10 minutes, automated API test success rate >95%, 100% API coverage, unit test line coverage >50%, and critical bug fix time under 3 hours.

Q: What challenges did you encounter during the assessment?

Bai Ta (Minister, IT Security & Service): Early coordination among development, testing, and operations was difficult; we formed cross‑functional teams, clarified responsibilities, held regular training and review meetings, and used weekly reports to align progress, ultimately achieving a smooth Level 3 pass.

Q: What is your biggest takeaway and next step for DevOps?

Bai: DevOps has enhanced our development speed, quality, and feedback mechanisms. We will continue to refine processes and extend DevOps practices to data management and infrastructure.

Q: How do you see the future of DevOps?

Bai: DevOps will accelerate digital transformation, promote micro‑service architectures, improve security and compliance through automation, and evolve alongside cloud computing, AI, and machine‑learning technologies.

Industry participation statistics and an overview of the CAICT DevOps Capability Maturity Model are provided, highlighting its global recognition (ITU‑T) and comprehensive coverage of agile management, continuous delivery, DevSecOps, platform engineering, SRE, and performance measurement.