How Minsheng Bank Reached Leading DevOps Maturity in Continuous Delivery

Editor’s Note: Standardization and tool empowerment are key to the success of technology companies. DevOps standards and pipeline platforms dramatically boost software development efficiency, enabling faster, more flexible market response and making IT a core competitive advantage.

On November 27, 2020, the 15th GOPS Global Operations Conference was held in Shanghai, jointly organized by the Open Source Cloud Computing Industry Alliance (OSCAR), GreatOPS, and OOPSA. The event, the largest in China’s operations industry, gathered thousands of professionals from internet, finance, and telecommunications sectors to share advanced technologies and best practices.

Assessment Results: The conference announced the ninth batch of DevOps Standard Continuous Delivery assessment results. Minsheng Bank’s Open Platform project passed the Level 3 (continuous delivery) of the “Research and Development Operations Integration (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model” conducted by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT). Level 3 is considered a leading domestic standard. The Agricultural Bank of China also achieved Level 3.

Evaluation Unit: China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT).

Interview with Peng Zhenshan, Assistant General Manager of Minsheng Bank’s Information Technology Department

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

Peng: Minsheng Bank is the first nationwide joint‑stock commercial bank initiated by private enterprises in China, with assets exceeding 7.1 trillion CNY and over 5.8 million employees. The evaluated project, the Minsheng Open Platform, is a unified open‑banking platform that integrates financial services through APIs, mini‑programs, and cloud ecosystems, breaking traditional channel and customer boundaries.

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

Peng: We are very pleased. Reaching Level 3 demonstrates that our project has attained an excellent level of DevOps continuous delivery maturity, confirming the successful transformation from traditional development to an efficient DevOps model and the value it brings.

Q: Why did Minsheng Bank decide to join the DevOps standard assessment?

Peng: As a testbed for financial reform, we follow the “customer‑centric” and “technology‑driven” visions, using “technology + data” as a dual engine to accelerate digital, networked, and intelligent transformation, strengthening both hard and soft capabilities.

Q: What improvements has the assessment brought to your organization?

Peng: The assessment enhanced three areas: (1) engineering practice – we built a customized delivery toolchain; (2) management processes – we adapted best‑practice DevOps processes; (3) team building – we cultivated DevOps coaches, trainers, and certified masters, forming a talent pipeline.

Q: Can you share specific metrics that reflect the project’s improvements?

Peng: Over a hundred optimization points were addressed, ranging from organization‑level versioning rules to code‑review effectiveness and unit‑test cases, resulting in measurable gains in build time, defect density, and release frequency.

Q: What are the technical characteristics of the Open Platform?

Peng: The platform runs on our container cloud, deployed as micro‑services with elastic horizontal scaling, supporting millions of concurrent accesses.

Q: How did the pandemic affect the assessment process?

Peng: The COVID‑19 outbreak in 2020 delayed progress, but remote work and overtime allowed us to catch up and complete the evaluation on schedule.

Q: What is the biggest takeaway from this year’s DevOps implementation?

Peng: DevOps serves as a lighthouse guiding us toward higher delivery efficiency; we plan to deepen engineering practices, promote agile development, and continuously improve delivery capabilities.

Q: How do you see the future of DevOps?

Peng: DevOps will mature beyond tool integration, focusing on value streams that enhance business outcomes and customer experience.

DevOps Capability Maturity Model: The model, jointly developed by CAICT, OSCAR, GreatOPS, BATJ, and leading enterprises, is the first domestic DevOps standard and was officially concluded by ITU‑T in July 2020. It covers agile development management, continuous delivery, technical operations, application design, security, risk management, and tooling.