How ICBC‑RS Achieved Leading‑Edge DevOps Continuous Delivery Level 3 in China

Background

Large enterprises worldwide have shown that standardization and tool empowerment are key to success. The DevOps standards and a pipeline platform based on these standards can significantly improve quality and efficiency, enhancing safety, agility, and market competitiveness.

Evaluation Announcement

On June 29, 2023, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) announced the latest batch of DevOps standard assessment results. ICBC‑RS Fund Management Co., Ltd. participated with its “Transaction Management Platform” project and passed the CAICT “R&D Operations Integration (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model” Continuous Delivery Level 3 assessment, indicating a leading domestic level.

ICBC‑RS is the first fund‑industry company to achieve Level 3 in continuous delivery.

Interview with CIO Wang Jian

Q: Please introduce yourself and the project.

A: Wang Jian, CIO of ICBC‑RS, describes the company’s background, scale, and the Transaction Management Platform as a core component handling complex, high‑reliability trading operations.

Q: How do you feel about passing the DevOps Level 3 assessment?

A: He expresses pride, noting the milestone demonstrates significant progress in DevOps, meeting higher IT support demands, and providing end‑to‑end delivery capability for digital transformation.

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

A: The company adopted a “assessment‑driven improvement” approach, began exploring DevOps in 2019, and used the assessment to benchmark against industry best practices and identify efficiency gains.

Q: What benefits has the assessment brought?

A: It reinforced both “tools + processes” and “culture + mindset”. The seven DevOps capability domains enabled full‑chain tool integration, automation, and a CALMS culture (Culture, Automation, Lean, Metrics, Sharing).

Q: Which metrics show concrete improvements?

A: Technical metrics: average build time reduced from 30 minutes to 5 minutes, CI response time from 3 days per run to real‑time, red‑light fix time from 2 days to 3 hours. Organizational metrics: approval time cut from 3 days to 2 hours, delivery cycle from 2 months to 2 weeks.

Q: What challenges did you encounter?

A: Building the pipeline and artifact repositories with open‑source tools required extensive customization. Team collaboration was improved by identifying bottlenecks and aligning goals, shrinking iteration cycles from ~2 months to 2 weeks and achieving near‑real‑time releases.

Q: What are your next steps?

A: Expand the “fire‑seed” of DevOps talent to other teams and continue iterative improvement, viewing the standard as both a starting point and an ongoing journey.

Industry Participation Overview

As of June 29 2023, the securities, fund, and futures sectors have submitted numerous DevOps capability assessments, with data visualized in the accompanying chart.

DevOps Capability Maturity Model

The model, jointly developed by CAICT, the Cloud Computing Open‑Source Industry Alliance, the Efficient Operations Community, BATJ, and leading enterprises, is the first comprehensive DevOps standard worldwide. It was approved by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and adopted by many financial, telecom, and internet companies. In July 2020, it became the first international DevOps standard under the ITU‑T.

The model covers process (agile management, continuous delivery, technical operations), application design, security and risk management, system and tools, business value management, collaborative development and operations, continuous testing, performance measurement, platform engineering, and reliability engineering.