How ICBC’s BizDevOps Evaluation Drives Digital Transformation and Sets New Standards

Background and National Initiative

On May 29, 2024, China’s Cyberspace Administration, State Administration for Market Regulation, and Ministry of Industry and Information Technology jointly issued the Information Standard Construction Action Plan (2024‑2027) , emphasizing the internationalization of information standards. The plan calls for deep participation in international standard bodies such as ISO, IEC, and ITU, and for aligning national standards with international technical indicators.

The China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) launched a synchronized assessment based on the ITU DevOps international standard and the domestic DevOps standard, enabling mutual recognition of standards. This assessment upgrades evaluation scope, certificates, and reports, aligning with the national action plan.

ICBC’s BizDevOps Dual‑Certificate Achievement

At the 25th GOPS Global Operations Conference in Shenzhen on April 25, 2025, CAICT announced the results of the ITU DevOps international standard and the domestic DevOps standard dual‑certificate assessment. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) successfully passed the BizDevOps International Standard and the domestic BizDevOps Business Value Management Level‑3 evaluation, demonstrating leading domestic capabilities.

Interview Highlights

Interviewees: Zhang Jianrong and Chen Xia, senior fintech managers at ICBC’s Software Development Center.

Q: Please introduce yourself and the project you evaluated.

A: Zhang explained his ten‑year experience in large‑scale state‑owned system development, his role in building a GitOps‑based DevOps model, and the “Fast Business Loan” project, which provides online credit loans to micro‑enterprises using transaction, tax, and settlement data for risk assessment.

Q: How does BizDevOps add value to digital transformation?

A: Both managers emphasized that BizDevOps creates a value‑driven closed‑loop management system, aligning business goals with technical execution, automating pipelines, and enabling data‑driven decision‑making. This improves cross‑department collaboration, accelerates delivery, and enhances system stability.

Q: What challenges were faced during implementation?

A: They identified two main challenges: (1) insufficient team awareness, addressed through systematic training and capability‑maturity models; (2) entrenched departmental silos, overcome by establishing a “shadow‑follow” collaborative framework that institutionalizes joint requirement definition, user‑experience co‑evaluation, and benchmarked cross‑team workshops.

Q: What are the future plans for BizDevOps?

A: ICBC plans to deepen platform integration—unifying toolchains across demand management, development, testing, continuous delivery, and intelligent operations—and to enhance data‑driven closed‑loop efficiency by refining value‑assessment models and focusing on core business scenarios.

Industry Impact and Statistics

ICBC has completed five CAICT DevOps assessments: two in continuous delivery, one in DevSecOps, and two in BizDevOps. A chart shows the ranking of state‑owned banks by the number of DevOps standard assessments completed as of April 25, 2025.

Further Resources

For more information on the BizDevOps and ITU DevOps standards, see the CAICT publications and the linked articles:

Organization‑level and International Dual‑Upgrade of BizDevOps

BizDevOps Framework in the Era of Digital Finance

Contact CAICT for DevOps standard assessment inquiries:

Zhang Jianyi – 158 1031 7021 – [email protected]

Bai Hanyong – 159 1076 9206 – [email protected]

Bai Lu – 153 1152 6860 – [email protected]