How Pudong Development Bank Reached DevOps Level 3: Insights from a Nationwide Assessment

GNSEC 2020 Global Software Engineering Summit

The GNSEC 2020 online summit, co‑organized by the Cloud Computing Open Industry Alliance, the Efficient Operations Community, and the DevOps Era Community, was held on June 19 2020 and attracted over 3,000 participants. The event focused on next‑generation software engineering, showcasing research, practice, and collaboration across industry, academia, and research.

DevOps Standard Level 3 Assessment Results

The summit announced the seventh batch of DevOps standard continuous‑delivery assessment results. Among the evaluated enterprises were major banks and insurers, including Shanghai Pudong Development Bank (SPD Bank). SPD Bank’s new Internet loan product system passed the third‑level assessment of the "Research‑Operations Integration (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model" conducted by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT).

According to the CAICT, the DevOps standard comprises five levels; achieving level 3 in continuous delivery is considered a domestic leading benchmark, indicating that SPD Bank’s delivery capability is among the best in China.

Interview with SPD Bank Leaders

Q: What does passing the Level 3 assessment mean for the bank? A: It validates our transition from traditional development to an efficient DevOps model, highlighting improvements in agile development, quality control, and automation. The assessment marks the start of a broader, organization‑wide DevOps optimization.

Q: How did SPD Bank decide to join the assessment? A: In early 2019 we launched a DevOps transformation plan, consulted enterprises with successful DevOps experiences, and recognized the rigor of the CAICT DevOps standard as a valuable guide for our own journey.

Q: What were the biggest gains from the 2019‑2020 DevOps implementation? A: Cultural shifts toward agility, standardized processes across single and multiple systems, and measurable improvements in development efficiency, quality, and delivery value. We also built a scalable pipeline and refined tooling across the organization.

Q: What challenges did you encounter during the assessment? A: Skill development for staff, automating complex test cases, and establishing meaningful DevOps metrics to quantify efficiency and quality gains. We addressed these by deploying coaches, enhancing test automation, and adopting CAICT’s measurement framework.

Q: How does the DevOps standard differ from other standards you have pursued? A: Unlike CMMI 3 or ISO 20000, the DevOps model tightly integrates theory with hands‑on practice, requiring live demonstrations of automated build, test, deployment, and measurement across multiple iterations.

Q: What does achieving Level 3 mean for the team and the bank? A: It is a source of pride and a catalyst for further improvements. We plan to expand DevOps skills to all staff, enhance our pipeline platform, and roll out DevOps practices to roughly 200 systems over the next three years.

DevOps Standard Overview

The world’s first DevOps standard, the "Research‑Operations Integration (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model," was jointly developed by CAICT, the Cloud Computing Open Industry Alliance, the Efficient Operations Community, the DevOps Era Community, Google, BATJ, Tsinghua University, Nanjing University, and leading enterprises in communications and finance.

The standard, now officially adopted by ITU‑T and the China Communications Standardization Association, evaluates seven areas: agile development management, continuous delivery, technical operations, application design, security and risk management, systems, and tools.