Sign-off and approvals are two different types of approval levels, different approval levels reflect about whose acceptance is needed to move forward with requirements, who is just expected to review and to provide opinion and who is responsible to confirm the requirement to be correct, accurate, understandable, and implementable, etc.


A person who is needed for sign-off is generally a highly authorized person and for him/her it is very difficult to confirm the requirements are correct and represent each aspect of solution unambiguously. Therefore they may ask someone closer to the project whether the requirements are acceptable, all relevant individual constituencies may be involved to confirm the accuracy and correctness of requirements.