How Ningbo Bank Achieved Leading DevOps Maturity: A Detailed Case Study

Domestic and international large enterprises have shown that standardization and tool empowerment are key to success. The DevOps standard and a continuous delivery pipeline platform can significantly improve quality, efficiency, safety, and agility, enhancing market competitiveness.

On October 28, 2022, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) announced the latest batch of DevOps and AIOps standard assessment results.

Ningbo Bank's Financial Services System Financing Center project passed the CAICT's "Research and Development Operations Integration (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model" Continuous Delivery Level 3 assessment, indicating a leading domestic DevOps capability.

Assessment Unit: China Academy of Information and Communications Technology

Result Announcement: Wei Kai, Deputy Director of the Cloud Computing and Big Data Research Institute, CAICT.

We interviewed Cheng Shuai, Deputy General Manager of the Financial Technology Department at Ningbo Bank, to discuss the project's details and share DevOps practice experiences.

Q&A

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

Cheng Shuai: Ningbo Bank has over 1,500 staff in the technology department and launched the “ISMART+” smart banking strategy in 2020, focusing on systematic, digital, and intelligent development. The evaluated project is the Financing Center of the Financial Services System, a key subsystem of the Treasury Management System, fully upgraded to meet the 2023 version requirements.

Refined user permissions to create an internal credit module, separating internal debtor and guarantor data.

Integrated with core and credit systems using the latest backend to reduce transaction failures and improve efficiency.

Added a regulatory center financing query module for real‑time monitoring and reduced management costs.

Optimized transaction and query speed, simplified processes, and enhanced user experience.

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

Cheng Shuai: We are thrilled that the project achieved Level 3 in just over five months, thanks to CAICT experts. This is our second project to pass the Level 3 assessment, confirming that the evaluation-driven improvements have significantly boosted our capabilities and reinforced our commitment to DevOps.

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

Cheng Shuai: Since 2020, Ningbo Bank has pursued technology empowerment, strengthening fintech infrastructure and driving digital transformation. The assessment helped us validate and refine our platform, personnel empowerment, and agile transformation, while learning from industry leaders to systematically enhance continuous delivery.

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

Cheng Shuai: This was the first customer‑facing system in the bank to undergo a DevOps assessment, setting a benchmark for engineering capability promotion. It deepened cross‑functional collaboration, refined requirement management, improved code quality, accelerated delivery, and established effective feedback loops.

Q: Can you share quantitative results from the assessment?

Cheng Shuai: After the assessment, small‑scale demand effort dropped from 45 person‑days to 25, integration response time improved from 0.5 day to 1 hour, and production frequency increased from twice a month to once a week. Additional data are shown below.

Q: What were the main challenges during implementation?

Multi‑platform coordination: Different management and tool platforms were initially siloed. The teams linked them via data sharing and API calls, achieving one‑click operations for many processes.

Granular requirement management: Complex financing business required frequent changes. The team repeatedly broke down and refined requirements, improving quality and stability.

Q: What are the biggest takeaways and next steps for DevOps in your bank?

Cheng Shuai: We combined industry‑leading DevOps theory with our engineering practices, cultivating DevOps coaches and strengthening cross‑department collaboration. Going forward, we will codify our DevOps guidelines, enhance agile user story splitting, automate pipelines, and expand DevOps into security and business domains.

Q: How do you view the future of DevOps?

Cheng Shuai: DevOps is a powerful driver of digital transformation, ensuring rapid delivery of business value. Emerging practices like AIOps and ChatOps are expanding DevOps into security and operations, and we will continue to explore and adopt these advances.

The "Research and Development Operations Integration (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model" series standards, led by CAICT with contributions from top internet, telecom, and financial companies, are the most comprehensive and authoritative DevOps standards worldwide, recognized by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and adopted by many leading enterprises.

For more information, contact CAICT or the Efficient Operations Community.