I am with you DBAs with your skepticism of ORMs, however, CI & CD, whilst no silver bullet, encourages early updates which also encourages a reasonable process for updating to be in place both for database schema management as well as data management.

A better team will also set up some performance testing early on too. Of course these are likely to only be indicative results but can highlight design issues early.

I would like to point out that no tool nor technique can better education. I don't necessarily mean from an academic institution (possibly I mean NOT from an academic institution ) but just the appropriate amount of knowledge AND understanding. In this case knowledge and understanding of relational theory and its application is a must e.g. if someone developing a database schema does not know about 3NF (just an example) or cannot explain it then they are not adequately equipped to perform their duties.