What Do China’s Top Banks Reveal About DevOps Maturity? Insights from GOPS 2023

On October 26, 2023, the 21st GOPS Global Operations Conference, co‑hosted by the Efficient Operations Community and the DevOps Era Community, took place in Shanghai.

The China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) announced the latest batch of DevOps capability maturity assessment results, a series of standards that provide crucial guidance for enterprise DevOps implementation. Enterprises from banking, securities, insurance, telecommunications, and internet sectors have participated, improving their IT capabilities.

Bank Participation Highlights

01 Agricultural Bank of China became the first state‑owned bank to assess the DevOps Technical Operations Standard, evaluating the “Distributed Core Open System Control (OSC)” and “Online Payment Platform – Third‑Party Quick Payment Module” projects.

During the assessment, the teams iterated on seven technical operation capability domains, achieving 100% completeness and accuracy in core configuration data, over 90% detection rate in business monitoring alerts, and enhanced user‑experience mechanisms.

02 Agricultural Bank of China also passed the Agile Development Management Standard assessment for “Data Middle‑Platform Portal Construction” and “User Behavior Data Collection and Analysis Platform” projects, establishing a full‑process agile development workflow that reduced key process time by 40% and improved delivery speed.

03 Bank of China successfully passed the Security and Risk Management (DevSecOps) standard assessment for its “Mobile Banking” project.

04 Bank of Communications passed the System and Tools standard assessment for the “Engineering Operations Platform” project.

05 Zhejiang Rural Commercial Union Bank, the first rural commercial bank to join the DevOps maturity assessment, evaluated the “Harvest Interconnected Mobile Banking” and “Merchant Financial Cloud” projects, enhancing platform functions, shortening delivery cycles, and establishing a one‑stop collaboration model across development, testing, and operations.

DevOps Capability Maturity Model Overview

The DevOps Capability Maturity Model, led by CAICT and co‑developed with the Cloud Computing Open Source Industry Alliance, major internet companies, and leading financial and telecom enterprises, is the most comprehensive and authoritative DevOps standard series in China. It has been published by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and adopted by numerous enterprises.

The model comprises process domains (Agile Development Management, Continuous Delivery, Technical Operations), application design, Security and Risk Management (DevSecOps), System and Tools, Business Value Management, Collaborative Development Operations, Continuous Testing, Performance Measurement, Platform Engineering, and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE).

Through the assessment, participating banks have improved their tool platforms, cultivated talent proficient in both DevOps practices and their specific contexts, and are advancing the large‑scale promotion of DevOps within the industry.