3 steps to modernizing software delivery in financial services

Through my 20 years of experience in financial services, most recently at Citi and now as Financial Services Field CTO at GitLab, I’ve gained a unique perspective on software delivery in the industry. My conversations with leaders at global financial services organizations reveal a consistent truth: software is a critical driver of competitive differentiation. However, mature software delivery practices and integrated developer experience are still an elusive goal.

This comes against the backdrop of rapid change in financial services, driven by intense competition from digital-first players who can deploy new features and products at remarkable speed. Meanwhile, many established organizations struggle with disconnected tools, manual processes, and poor developer experience — obstacles that organizations can no longer ignore.

The most forward-thinking financial institutions see software delivery — and DevSecOps — as a core business capability that directly affects their market position. However, to realize the full benefits of DevSecOps, organizations need to move from disconnected tools to integrated platforms that seamlessly unite teams and processes as customer demands evolve and digital transformation accelerates.

The implementation gap in financial services

Despite significant investments in DevSecOps, I’ve observed a clear gap between promise and reality at many banks and financial services providers:

• Manual governance: Security and compliance validation still involves significant manual processes, creating bottlenecks.
• Limited visibility: Decision makers lack comprehensive insight into the software development lifecycle, making identifying constraints and optimizing processes difficult.
• Fragmented developer experience: Developers must navigate a complex maze of disconnected tools that hamper productivity and innovation.
• Integration complexity: DevSecOps implementations that rely on dozens of tools cobbled together with custom integrations result in less efficient development processes.

These challenges reflect the limitations of tools available when institutions began their DevSecOps journeys. The best way for organizations to catch up is to adopt a single DevSecOps platform, bringing built-in security, compliance controls, and end-to-end metrics into a unified developer experience.

The modern platform advantage

Modern DevSecOps platforms provide a comprehensive approach to software delivery that further advances traditional implementations. The core advantages can be seen in three critical areas:

Integrated security and compliance: Unified platforms embed security directly into delivery infrastructure through automated policy enforcement. Teams benefit from real-time vulnerability detection during development rather than after release. Continuous compliance validation eliminates manual steps and helps to ensure supply chain security, reducing risk across the organization.

Unified developer experience: Where developers once navigated disconnected tools, modern platforms provide consistent interfaces that minimize context switching. Self-service capabilities eliminate provisioning delays, while standardized workflows enforce best practices by default, improving quality and consistency.

Comprehensive operational intelligence: End-to-end metrics connect technical activities to business outcomes, and predictive analytics identify potential issues before they impact customers. Modern platforms also automate compliance reporting — eliminating tedious manual documentation — and provide value stream visualization to help teams quickly identify and resolve bottlenecks.

The results: Measurable business impact

For financial services providers, the benefits of modernizing software delivery platforms extend far beyond technical improvements. According to Forrester's Total Economic Impact study of GitLab Ultimate, a composite organization representative of interviewed customers with experience using GitLab Ultimate achieved:

• 483% ROI over three years
• 50% more feature deliveries
• 75% faster developer onboarding
• 535 hours saved per developer annually

Beyond operational metrics, modernization also creates strategic advantages, such as:

• Innovation velocity: Financial institutions with modernized delivery platforms can rapidly develop and launch customer-centric features, significantly reducing time-to-market and enabling personalized experiences.
• Talent retention: Leading financial institutions report 47% higher retention rates for technical talent after modernizing their delivery platforms.
• Regulatory agility: Financial services institutions with modern delivery platforms adapt to regulatory changes faster than those with legacy approaches, transforming compliance from a burden to a potential advantage.
• More efficient mergers and acquisitions: Modern platforms reduce technology integration timelines, significantly increasing the success rate of acquisitions and partnerships.
• Geographic expansion: Standardized delivery capabilities enable faster adaptation of core digital services to local requirements without compromising global standards.

Each of these outcomes directly contributes to shareholder value and competitive positioning.

Taking action: The path forward

For those setting the strategy, the path to modernizing software delivery requires strategic vision and pragmatic execution. Here are three steps you can take to begin your transformation journey:

Assess current state and build organizational alignment

Begin with an objective assessment of your current delivery capabilities and develop a comprehensive vision for where you need to go:

• Map existing tools and workflows across the entire software development lifecycle
• Identify integration gaps and manual handoffs that create bottlenecks
• Measure current performance using industry-standard metrics
• Establish security and compliance requirements for automated enforcement

Define the target architecture

Develop a comprehensive vision for modern software delivery that addresses your specific needs:

• Design a unified platform strategy that eliminates fragmentation
• Establish security and compliance requirements for automated enforcement
• Define role-based experiences for developers, operators, and business stakeholders
• Create clear governance models that balance innovation with control
• Set measurable performance targets aligned with business objectives
• Establish executive sponsors and organizational alignment

Create an implementation roadmap

Build a pragmatic approach to transformation that delivers continuous value:

• Identify high-impact areas for initial implementation
• Design a phased approach with clear milestones
• Develop evolution strategies for existing applications and workloads
• Define success metrics for each phase
• Create feedback mechanisms to refine the approach based on results

The natural evolution of your DevSecOps journey

Today’s tools offer capabilities that simply didn’t exist five years ago, directly addressing the financial services sector’s most pressing challenges. Modern DevSecOps tools enable secure software releases while providing the agility to meet evolving market demands.

Successful financial services firms approach this as an evolution of targeted enhancements that compound over time, building on existing foundations to unlock new possibilities for innovation, application security, and efficiency.

The next phase of your DevSecOps journey starts now.