How ICBC Trust Achieved Leading DevOps Maturity: A 3‑Level Continuous Delivery Success

Standardization and tool empowerment are key to enterprise success; applying DevOps standards and a continuous‑delivery pipeline can markedly improve quality, efficiency, and safety, enhancing market competitiveness.

Evaluation Announcement

On June 29, 2023, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) announced the latest DevOps standard assessment results.

ICBC Trust 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 capability.

It is also the first fund‑industry company to achieve Level 3.

Interview with CIO Wang Jian

Q: Please introduce yourself, your company, and the project you evaluated.

A: Wang Jian, CIO of ICBC Trust, described the company’s scale, its digital‑transformation background, and the Transaction Management Platform as a core, complex, high‑reliability system supporting fixed‑income and equity trading.

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

A: He expressed pride that the platform’s success marks a milestone, proving high‑efficiency, reliable end‑to‑end software delivery and providing new momentum 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, built pipelines with open‑source tools, and used the assessment to benchmark against industry best practices.

Q: What benefits has the assessment brought?

A: It delivered both “tool + process” improvements (full‑chain automation, data sharing) and cultural shifts (CALMS: Culture, Automation, Lean, Metrics, Sharing).

Q: Which metrics show the project’s improvement?

A: Build time dropped from 30 minutes to 5 minutes; continuous‑integration response changed from 3 days per run to real‑time; red‑light fix time fell from 2 days to 3 hours; approval time reduced from 3 days to 2 hours; delivery cycle shortened from 2 months to 2 weeks.

Q: What challenges did you face during the assessment?

A: The team rebuilt infrastructure using open‑source products, created ten pipelines, and achieved Level 4 in five sub‑areas (artifact management, trusted data source, environment/configuration management). Organizationally, they reduced iteration cycles by breaking bottlenecks and aligning team rhythms, cutting iteration from ~2 months to ~2 weeks.

Q: What is the biggest gain and your next plan?

A: The biggest gain is a talent pool proficient in DevOps; the next steps are to spread this “fire seed” across teams and continue iterative improvement.

Q: How do you view the future of DevOps?

A: He believes DevOps will become a core competitive advantage as digital transformation accelerates, emphasizing culture, collaboration, and continuous optimization.

Industry Participation Overview

Statistics (as of June 29 2023) show the number of securities, fund, and futures firms that have undergone DevOps maturity assessments, with data sourced from the official assessment portal.

DevOps Capability Maturity Model

The model, jointly developed by CAICT, the Cloud Computing Open‑Source Alliance, the Efficient Operations Community, BATJ, and leading enterprises, is the first comprehensive DevOps standard worldwide, endorsed by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and adopted by many financial, telecom, and internet companies.

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