Approving change requests is extremely simple!

A change request can go through two stages of approvals:  the assess stage and the authorize stage. In the Assess stage, an approval is required from any member of the group that owns the service, including the manage.  For our purposes, let's use ServiceNow as the service.

You can see in the image below that we are in the assess stage.  The change request is waiting for approvals from any member of the ServiceNow team.  You can approve the change request by either double clicking the "Requested" field and changing it to Approved, or by clicking the "Approve" button at the top of the page.

Once you refresh the page, you will see that the change has moved on to the Authorize stage. 

In the Authorize stage, the change request can ONLY be approved by the manager to continue moving forward. In the following image, you can see the original list of potential approvers and the actual approver - in this case, Oscar Gutierrez.  The change now requires approval from the manager,  Mallory Walker.  Once the manager approves this change, using one of the two methods described above, the change request will move on to the next stage.

NOTE: If the manager of the group is the person that approves the change request in the Assess stage, the workflow will consider the change authorized as well and will move on to the Scheduled stage.  The manager will NOT need to approve the change twice.

And that's all there is to it! 

Please note:  if the Risk level of the change  is High or higher, the change request may go to the CAB for another round of approvals.  Most normal changes will end the approval process with the two steps above. 

If the assignment group for any reason does not have a manager listed, the approval for authorization will automatically route to the CAB.