How China Post & Savings Bank Achieved Level‑3 Continuous Testing – A DevOps Success Story

As R&D integration (DevOps) becomes widespread across industries, testing has become a critical step for improving R&D operational quality.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "14th Five-Year Plan for Software and Information Technology Services," emphasizing the need to enhance software quality management, monitoring, early warning, and evaluation capabilities, and to improve testing certification standards.

On December 15, 2023, the 2023 GOLF+ IT New Governance Leadership Forum was held in Beijing, where the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) announced the latest batch of DevOps and AIOps standard assessment results.

China Postal Savings Bank (CPSB) submitted two projects—the Enterprise Mobile Banking System and the Project Construction Funds Supervision System—and both successfully passed the CAICT Continuous Testing (CT) Level‑3 assessment, positioning the bank’s capabilities at a domestic leading level. CPSB is also the first state‑owned bank to pass the Continuous Testing standard assessment.

Interview with Hu Junfeng, General Manager of CPSB Software R&D Center

Q: Please introduce yourself, your organization, and the projects involved in the assessment.

A: I am Hu Junfeng, General Manager of the Software R&D Center at China Postal Savings Bank. Our bank serves over 6.5 billion personal customers through nearly 40,000 outlets, focusing on rural, urban residents, and small‑medium enterprises. We drive digital transformation with a "SPEEDS" technology strategy, implementing DevOps, open‑source governance, and other measures to continuously improve IT governance.

Both the Enterprise Mobile Banking System (a corporate‑client mobile app with features such as credit inquiry, intelligent recommendation, live video, and digital human broadcasting) and the Project Construction Funds Supervision System (a fintech product for rail, road, and subway infrastructure financing) passed the Level‑3 Continuous Testing assessment.

Q: How does passing the Continuous Testing Level‑3 assessment feel?

A: It is an honor to be among the first banks to achieve this level. The assessment provided valuable, practical suggestions that helped us improve our DevOps continuous testing capabilities across development, testing, and operations teams.

Q: Why is a continuous testing system important for enterprise development?

A: In the digital economy, banks face rapid, high‑quality delivery demands. Continuous testing links requirement, design, development, testing, deployment, and operation, standardizing and automating each stage, thereby boosting delivery efficiency and product quality.

Q: Why did your bank choose to participate in this assessment?

A: The Continuous Testing standard, led by CAICT, helps us benchmark against industry best practices, identify gaps, and continuously optimize our processes.

Since 2019, CPSB has passed 17 DevOps standard assessments, including continuous delivery, system and tool, and DevSecOps evaluations.

Q: What changes did the assessment bring to your projects and teams?

A: The assessment raised our testing capability to industry‑leading levels, improved project quality and efficiency, enhanced platform support, and fostered a stronger quality awareness across the organization.

Q: What concrete improvements resulted from the assessment?

A: Automation rates increased significantly, technical debt dropped by 99 %, and overall release cycles shortened, leading to faster, higher‑quality delivery for both the funds supervision system and the enterprise mobile banking app.

Q: What challenges did you encounter during the assessment and how were they solved?

A: Limited reference cases required us to form a dedicated project team, conduct daily and weekly coordination meetings, and leverage our internally developed platforms (DevOps R&D Collaboration Platform and the "Xingchen" platform) to support parallel testing and system development.

Q: What are your future plans for continuous testing?

A: We will further integrate continuous testing standards into our internal processes, develop a bank‑specific DevTestOps specification, and enhance the "Xingchen" platform to achieve end‑to‑end automation and intelligence across the software lifecycle.

Q: What trends do you see for testing technologies?

A: Testing automation will expand into performance, security, and AI‑driven testing. Cloud‑based, integrated testing platforms will become more prevalent, and personalized testing solutions will emerge to meet specific user needs.

The DevOps Capability Maturity Model, jointly developed by CAICT, cloud‑computing alliances, and leading enterprises, is the first comprehensive DevOps standard in China and has been adopted by many financial and telecom firms. It covers agile management, continuous delivery, DevSecOps, system and tool evaluation, and continuous testing among other domains.

For more information on the assessment, contact CAICT representatives Liu Kaili (phone 156 5078 6171, email [email protected]) or Bai Hanxiong (phone 159 1076 9206, email [email protected]).