How New BizDevOps Standards Are Shaping China’s Digital Transformation

1. DevOps Standard Progress

Recent investigations show that DevOps has entered a large‑scale, comprehensive application phase, expanding from eight to fifteen components. In May 2024, the Cyberspace Administration, the State Administration for Market Regulation, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology jointly issued the "Information Technology Standard Construction Action Plan (2024‑2027)" emphasizing international compatibility, domestic‑international standard mutual recognition, and enterprise standard development.

The ITU‑DevOps international standard was upgraded after a two‑year research cycle (2018‑2020) and received formal approval, becoming China’s first DevOps international standard and adding a dual‑report assessment mechanism.

2. New BizDevOps Standard System

BizDevOps accelerates lean R&D by integrating business and technology. Originating from Toyota’s lean concepts in the 1990s, it evolved through agile (2001), DevOps (2009), and now BizDevOps (2023). Its seven lean principles align closely with agile and DevOps values such as customer value, iterative improvement, rapid feedback, continuous integration, value streams, waste elimination, and visualization.

Surveys indicate that about 60% of Chinese enterprises have reached a comprehensive DevOps maturity level, with notable efficiency and quality gains. Examples include Industrial and Commercial Bank of China’s significant R&D efficiency improvements after adopting DevOps standards.

BizDevOps also emphasizes business‑technology integration, supported by policies from the State Administration for Market Regulation and the People’s Bank of China, which call for co‑creation teams and removal of barriers between business and IT.

3. Standard System Content Introduction

Based on prior research, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) coordinated nearly 100 enterprises to draft the first domestic “BizDevOps” standard—Part 9 of the DevOps Capability Maturity Model covering business value delivery management. The standard addresses business value management, application‑level service development, business operations, personnel and cultural transformation, and system/tools.

Tool support is defined across modules such as value management, business process management, collaboration, experimentation, delivery, operation, integration, maintainability, security, and platform capabilities.

Assessments show that banks, airlines, and major cloud providers have passed BizDevOps tool and system evaluations.

Continuous testing standards (Part 11) were released in October 2023 after 18 months of discussion, focusing on the entire test lifecycle from requirements to deployment and operation, with metrics for capability and efficiency.

CAICT also published a generic DevOps performance measurement model to help enterprises quantify R&D and operations effectiveness across industries such as finance, telecom, energy, and manufacturing.

Security is addressed through DevSecOps, with examples like Agricultural Bank of China passing 14 DevSecOps assessments.

Platform engineering is highlighted as a core capability for successful DevOps implementation, emphasizing standardization, automation, scalability, CI/CD support, documentation, customization, monitoring, and security.

CAICT leads the drafting of Part 13 of the DevOps Capability Maturity Model, focusing on platform engineering requirements, with over 40 enterprises participating.

4. XOps New Hotspots

Five emerging hotspots are identified:

Quality management standards (the “Red Book” for quality teams) to guide software process quality control.

Demand management, with a new standard covering analysis, planning, implementation, value evaluation, collaboration, metrics, and tooling.

User experience, reflected in a group standard on IT quality management for UX released in 2023.

Large‑model applications in R&D operations, enabling intelligent diagnosis and resolution across development, testing, and operations.

Digital employees, leveraging AI large models to automate telecom operations and improve efficiency.