A developer requires product-owner approval before deploying code to production. CodePipeline is used for deployment. An SNS topic is configured to notify the product owner. What is the MOST operationally efficient way for the developer to obtain approval from the product owner in this pipeline?

The most operationally efficient way is to add a new stage with a manual approval action. CodePipeline's manual approval action is designed precisely for this scenario, pausing the pipeline until a designated approver acts. Integrating a notification rule with this action ensures the product owner is automatically alerted via the SNS topic when their approval is needed. This approach leverages native CodePipeline features, minimizing custom development and maintenance overhead. Building a Step Functions state machine for approval is overly complex and less efficient than using the built-in manual approval action. Adding a manual approval action within the existing production stage might not be ideal if other actions in that stage should only run after approval. Editing CodePipeline notification settings to trigger on manual approval events is a necessary step, but it doesn't add the approval step itself; it only configures notifications for an existing or newly added manual approval action.