Inside a Chinese Bank’s Leap to Leading DevOps Maturity and Faster Delivery

Editor’s note: Standardization and tool empowerment are key to success for technology companies. The DevOps standards and a standards‑based continuous delivery pipeline platform have dramatically boosted software development efficiency, enabling faster, more flexible market response and strengthening IT as a core competitive advantage.

On December 23, 2020, the 2020 GOLF+ IT New Governance Leadership Forum was held in Beijing to promote IT governance and share industry experience. The event focused on “empowering governance, leading the new tech ecosystem” and “XOPS driving the new direction of operations.”

The forum announced the tenth batch of DevOps capability maturity continuous delivery assessment results. Zhongbang Bank’s Internet Financial Service Platform passed the third‑level continuous delivery assessment of the “R&D‑Operations Integration (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model” conducted by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), a level considered a domestic leading standard.

Interview with Peng Lei, Deputy General Manager of Zhongbang Bank’s FinTech Innovation Department

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

Peng: Zhongbang Bank, initiated by Zhuoer Holdings and other Hubei private enterprises, is the 11th privately‑owned bank approved by the China Banking Regulatory Commission and the only private bank in Hubei. Established in May 2017 with an initial registered capital of CNY 2 billion, it increased to CNY 4 billion in January 2020. It is the first internet‑transaction bank in China, recognized as a national high‑tech enterprise in 2019, and focuses on providing one‑stop digital financial services for small‑and‑medium enterprises and individuals.

Q: How did you feel after achieving the third‑level continuous delivery rating?

Peng: The achievement reflects strong support from senior management and the team’s dedication. It motivates us to further invest in related areas and confirms that our DevOps practice has reached a leading domestic level.

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

Peng: As an internet bank, we adopt a “demand‑driven, pain‑point, high‑frequency” mindset, leveraging big data, cloud computing, and AI to achieve online, automated, and intelligent operations. The assessment provided clear goals and inspired improvements in our agile development system.

Q: What benefits has the DevOps assessment brought to your enterprise?

Peng: It gave us a clear target for DevOps implementation and introduced new ideas for building an agile development system, thereby enhancing our overall R&D capability.

Q: Which metrics show the concrete impact of the assessment?

Peng: Development cycle time for some systems decreased by more than three times, release frequency improved from a two‑week iteration to daily releases, and defect density dropped by over tenfold.

Q: What are the key technical features of the evaluated project?

Peng: To handle massive user volume and high concurrency, we built the “POWER” IT architecture with five layers—ecosystem cooperation, open interconnection, digital middle‑platform, basic services, and technology innovation. The platform combines private cloud and container technologies, enabling rapid elastic scaling.

DevOps Capability Maturity Model Overview

The “R&D‑Operations Integration (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model” series standards were jointly developed by CAICT, the Cloud Computing Open Source Industry Alliance, the Efficient Operations Community, BATJ, and leading enterprises in finance and communications. It is the first domestic and international DevOps series standard, officially adopted by the China Communications Standardization Association (CCSA) and concluded by the ITU‑T in July 2020 as the world’s first DevOps international standard.

The assessment framework covers agile development management, continuous delivery, technical operations, application design, security and risk management, system and tool aspects.

For further information on the DevOps standard assessment, please contact CAICT (Liu Kaili) at 156 5078 6171 or [email protected], or the Efficient Operations Community (Dong Hui) at 185 1511 5139 or [email protected].