Drupal based website - Build and Release

Firstly not sure if this is the right forum to put this. I was unable to find anything related to build and release of drupal based web sites.

I'm new to the world of drupal and php and have the task of handling drupal builds to various environments (development, QA, Stating and production). Currently for every release of the site i usually have to go through the following set of tasks:

1) Update the code.'
2) Update DB with insert scripts to mo
3) Login to the website and from the drupal admin console tasks like, enabling/disabling a module. Changing block location width etc.

I've to repeat these steps and they are highly error prone. Was wondering if there is an automation tool around it. I've done some reading and believe i should be putting following things into place:

1) Installation profiles for each release of the website.
2) Modifying DAST build scripts for my website is what I was looking into, did seem to be promising but am unable to download the dependencies from the abherry.info site. Hence unable to get it running. Also it seems there is no support available for DAST as well.
3) Phing: I'm going invest some time in reading about it.

Here is what i want to know from all you people who have been using drupal for their websites for a while. Please suggest me ways to make the build and release process more simple. Also any other thoughts around continuous integration (Xinc) or any other leanings/best practices related to deploying drupal websites please let me know.