When composite products are machined to designed shapes, geometrical deformations are generated with removal of materials, which is caused by release of residual stresses generated during the curing process of composite materials. Due to the uncontrollability of the deformation in machining process, both requirements of form and dimensional tolerances are difficult to meet. Inspired by the relationship between material removal and stress release of the slitting method, a deformation control methodology by introducing stress‐release‐groove in machining process was proposed. Residual stresses were firstly measured by using the slitting method and the distribution of residual stresses in thickness direction was estimated. Finite element model was then created and used to study the influence of machining process on geometrical deformation of the composite. It was found that the pre‐processing grooves can reduce the subsequent processing deformation and consequently improve the machining accuracy. To make the release of stress controllable, the influences of width, spacing, depth, and processing sequence of grooves on machining deformation were numerical studied.