How China’s Top Banks Earned Level 3 Continuous Testing Under the New DevOps Standard

With the widespread practice of R&D‑operation integration across industries, testing has become a key link for improving R&D quality. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s “14th Five‑Year Plan for Software and IT Services” calls for enhanced software quality management, monitoring, early‑warning and evaluation, and the establishment of a testing certification and evaluation system. Test‑driven development boosts efficiency, delivery capability and quality, making software testing a strategic focus for the nation.

Amid digital transformation, enterprises adopt DevOps to raise IT efficiency. The “DevOps Capability Maturity Model” series, led by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), formed the basis for the ITU‑T Y.3525 international standard approved in July 2020. Since its first assessment in 2018, the model has covered more than 20 industries and over a hundred enterprises by early 2024.

Continuous Testing (Standard 11) Participation Results

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China – First State‑Owned Bank to Pass the Standard

The evaluated projects “Intelligent Bad‑Asset Disposal Platform Phase 4” and “Online‑Offline Integrated Tag Service Phase 2” both achieved Level 3 CT assessment. Testing improvements spanned requirement‑stage testing, design‑stage testing, quality management and continuous feedback, enhancing test‑person involvement, test strategy adaptability, pipeline integration, automation coverage, and full‑lifecycle test data management, thereby creating a continuous‑testing loop covering the entire software lifecycle.

China Agricultural Bank – First State‑Owned Bank to Pass the Standard

Projects “Enterprise Mobile Banking System” and “Project Construction Fund Supervision System” passed Level 3 CT assessment. The assessment aligned testing capabilities with project specifics, using requirements as entry criteria and production as exit criteria. Automation regression rates rose sharply, technical debt fell 99%, and overall delivery time shortened, improving testing service capability and R&D efficiency.

China Postal Savings Bank – First State‑Owned Bank to Pass the Standard

The evaluated projects “Enterprise Mobile Banking System” and “Project Construction Fund Supervision System” achieved Level 3 CT assessment, improving demand response, accelerating high‑speed‑rail fund supervision, increasing rollout speed, and providing richer data support for decision‑making.

China International Capital Corp (CICC) – First Securities Firm to Pass the Standard

The “Comprehensive Risk Management System – Unified Business Management Platform” improved demand management, test environment and data governance, and enhanced testing capabilities across planning, design, unit, integration, UAT, pipeline closure and efficiency metrics. Test case quality and coverage improved, and a global quality analysis mechanism was established, supporting risk‑limit alerts and reporting.

Shenwan Hongyuan – First Securities Firm to Pass the Standard

The “Business Middle‑Platform” built on a micro‑service architecture now serves over 3,000 APIs and 100+ systems with daily 10 million visits. Continuous testing shifted left and right, increased automation coverage, and closed the improvement loop, contributing to cost reduction and digital transformation.

ITU DevOps International Standard Introduction

In July 2018, CAICT led the DevOps international standard project at the ITU‑T Study Group 13 meeting in Geneva, with participation from over 90 delegates from more than 20 countries. The standard Y.3525, titled “Cloud Computing – Requirements for Cloud Service Development and Operation Management,” was approved in July 2020.

Domestic DevOps Standard “DevOps Capability Maturity Model” Overview

The model, jointly developed by CAICT, the Cloud Computing Open Industry Alliance, the Efficient Operations Community, BATJ and major financial and telecom enterprises, has strong authority and industry guidance. It covers process (agile management, continuous delivery, technical operations), application design, security and risk management, system and tools, business value management, collaborative development‑operations, continuous testing, efficiency measurement, platform engineering, and reliability engineering.

For assessments or inquiries, contact CAICT representatives (phone and email details omitted for brevity).