In the evolution of release management, transitioning from manual, cumbersome processes to modern automated systems is critical for meeting both speed and compliance demands, especially in regulated industries. Modern release management balances the need for fast, frequent deployments with rigorous oversight and risk mitigation through automation, feature flags, and continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) pipelines. These practices reduce human error, provide audit trails, and enable controlled, gradual feature rollouts, which can prevent the high-stakes failures seen in past large-scale deployments. Effective release management incorporates systematic planning, automated testing, controlled rollouts, real-time monitoring, and iterative feedback loops to ensure agility and reliability. By integrating compliance into agile processes and using tools like feature flags, organizations can innovate quickly without sacrificing safety or compliance, turning the release process into a more manageable, transparent, and resilient operation.