Guide: What Is a Software Release?

A software release is a set of updates or new features for a product or service. Major releases introduce significant changes and may impact user experience, while minor releases fix bugs or improve performance. Emergency releases address critical issues outside the regular release cycle. The software release lifecycle includes stages such as pre-alpha, alpha, beta, release candidate, and final release. Release management has evolved from project management to driving business value through identifying bottlenecks and analyzing user interactions. Deployment strategies like canary deployments and feature flags allow for decoupling deployment from releases, enabling better testing and rollback capabilities.