How Minsheng Bank Reached Level‑3 DevOps Continuous Delivery – A Leading‑Edge Case Study

Domestic large‑scale enterprises have shown that standardization and tool empowerment are key to success; the DevOps standards and the DevOps continuous delivery pipeline platform can significantly improve quality, efficiency, safety, and agility, boosting market competitiveness.

The China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) has issued a "Research and Development Operations Integration (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model" series of standards that guide enterprise DevOps implementation. Companies from banking, securities, insurance, telecom, and internet sectors have participated in CAICT assessments, improving their IT capabilities.

On April 25, 2024, the 22nd GOPS Global Operations Conference & XOps Technology Innovation Summit was held in Shenzhen, where CAICT announced the latest batch of DevOps standard assessment results.

Minsheng Bank’s "Marketing Rights Module" passed the CAICT DevOps Continuous Delivery Level‑3 assessment, indicating a domestic leading level of capability.

Assessment Unit: China Academy of Information and Communications Technology

Minsheng Bank has completed four CAICT DevOps assessments: two for continuous delivery, one for technical operations, and one for systems and tools.

Q&A with Minsheng Bank Tech Leaders

Li Jianbing (Senior DevOps Expert) – The assessment process was generally smooth but faced challenges such as differing interpretations of standards and the pressure of bi‑weekly iteration improvements. Overcoming these required innovation, collaboration, and continuous improvement.

He noted that the biggest gain was higher delivery efficiency and quality, with teams learning industry best practices and fostering a collaborative culture that benefits long‑term development.

Future plans include deepening automation, expanding toolchains, strengthening skill training, and continuously monitoring and optimizing the DevOps process while engaging with industry peers.

Li Xiaodong (Assistant General Manager, Tech Department) – Participation in the DevOps maturity assessment provided an objective view of the bank’s R&D‑operations integration, revealing strengths and gaps. The assessment guided targeted improvements across development, testing, platform, and operations teams, leading to systematic enhancements of the DevOps pipeline and tool capabilities.

Key metrics improved dramatically: demand delivery cycle shortened from 22 days to 13 days; average CI failure fix time reduced from over one day to three hours, thanks to agile practices, automated quality checks, left‑shift testing and security, and optimized pipeline workflows.

Chen Shenlong (Senior Director, Tech Department) – Minsheng Bank, the first nationwide joint‑stock commercial bank founded by private capital, pursues digital transformation through smart and ecosystem banking. The "Marketing Rights Module" provides enterprise‑level rights product definition, lifecycle services, and payment capabilities, built on a cloud‑native architecture using in‑house frameworks.

The rights system evolved through four stages: fragmented construction, unified management, scenario integration, and enterprise‑level capability building, supporting retail, corporate, and branch operations.

Achieving Level‑3 continuous delivery validates the bank’s digital transformation and fuels confidence for further innovation.

Industry Participation Overview

As of April 25, 2024, the number of joint‑stock banks that have undergone DevOps maturity assessments is shown below.

The "Research and Development Operations Integration (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model" series, led by CAICT together with the Cloud Computing Open Source Alliance, Efficient Operations Community, BATJ, and major financial, telecom, and internet enterprises, has become an authoritative standard adopted by many leading firms and officially released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Since July 2020, the DevOps standard has been recognized by the ITU‑T (standard number ITU‑T Y.3525) and can be formally evaluated. The overall DevOps architecture covers agile development management, continuous delivery, technical operations, application design, security and risk management, system and tool management, business value management, collaborative development‑operations, continuous testing, performance measurement, platform engineering, and reliability engineering.