Who decides when to release?

• A. Product Owner
• B. Release management team
• C. System Architect
• D. Scrum Master

Answer: (B)

Deciding when to release is a governance responsibility that Release Management holds, coordinating readiness across multiple teams and stakeholders to ensure the release meets all criteria for quality, risk, and compliance. They verify deployment plans, back-out procedures, environments, and release windows, weighing business value against potential risk before going live. The Product Owner focuses on what to build and the acceptance of features, not when to push to production. The System Architect concentrates on the technical design and scalability, not release timing. The Scrum Master helps the team with process and impediments but does not own release scheduling. So, Release Management is the function equipped to orchestrate and authorize releases, making it the correct choice.