How Zhejiang Rural Commercial Bank Reached Level‑3 DevOps Maturity and Boosted Efficiency

Domestic and international large enterprises have demonstrated that standardization and tool empowerment are critical for success; DevOps standards and a standards‑based continuous delivery pipeline can significantly improve quality, efficiency, and security, enhancing market competitiveness.

On October 26, 2023, the 21st GOPS Global Operations Conference in Shanghai announced the latest evaluation results of the DevOps series standards, with Zhejiang Rural Commercial Bank’s two projects—Fengshou Mobile Banking and Merchant Financial Cloud—successfully passing the CAICT "R&D‑Operations Integrated (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model" Continuous Delivery Level‑3 assessment, indicating a leading domestic capability.

Interview with Xu Wensheng, Senior Technical Expert, Zhejiang Rural Commercial Bank

Q: Please introduce yourself, your bank, and the projects evaluated.

A: I am Xu Wensheng, senior technical expert in the bank’s technology service department. Our bank focuses on serving agriculture, small enterprises, and local economies, and has been driving digital transformation across 17 domains, including demand, development, testing, operations, network, quality, and security management.

Q: How does the Fengshou Mobile Banking platform leverage digital technologies?

A: It integrates mobile internet, big data, AI, cloud computing, and 5G to provide a 24/7, cross‑region, comprehensive financial and lifestyle service platform covering accounts, payments, wealth management, loans, and public services.

Q: What is the Merchant Financial Cloud?

A: It is an integrated management platform for merchants across the province, offering unified services such as customer acquisition, coupon marketing, payment collection, settlement, big‑data operations, wealth management, and consumer credit.

Q: How did the evaluation impact your organization?

A: The DevOps platform was enriched with quality gates, enabling robust code checks, functional and non‑functional verification, and secure production deployment. Development cycles shortened, deployment frequency increased, and a bidirectional traceability chain from code to artifact was established.

Q: What measurable improvements resulted from the assessment?

A: The bank achieved higher automation in testing, reduced manual effort, and established a one‑stop collaboration model aligning development, testing, and operations toward product delivery goals.

Q: What challenges were faced during the evaluation?

A: Tight schedules and high demand volume required splitting improvement items into agile iterations, completing over 140 improvement tasks without delaying regular deliveries.

Q: What are the next steps for your DevOps journey?

A: Continue strengthening tool capabilities to meet higher maturity standards and rapidly promote the refined DevOps framework across the organization.

Q: How do you view the future of DevOps?

A: DevOps is a forward‑looking philosophy that integrates development, testing, delivery, operations, culture, and collaboration; its adoption will become a core competitive advantage for more enterprises.

Industry Participation Overview

As of October 26, 2023, the number of city‑commercial banks and other financial institutions participating in the DevOps Capability Maturity Model assessment is summarized in the chart below.

The "R&D‑Operations Integrated (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model" series, led by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) with contributions from industry leaders, is the first comprehensive DevOps standard worldwide, recognized by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and adopted by many leading enterprises.

The model covers agile development management, continuous delivery, technical operations, DevSecOps, system and tool management, business value management, collaborative development‑operations, continuous testing, performance measurement, platform engineering, and reliability engineering.