I may be a bit strange in thinking this, but to my mind a DBA should understand what is being deployed (ultimately because we are the ones to support it!) and therefore I encourage DBAs to be involved in the development, from table design and space requirements to support the application.

If you understand the table structure and the data, then deployment should come down to a relatively simple set of requirements that are well understood. You can also identify additional hardware requirements before they become an issue. Various scripting tools exist to allow comparisons and scripting of table moves etc. (not least of which is Red-Gate)

If you leave the DB design up to the application developers, I can pretty much guarantee that it will cause you pain later and create the "Us and Them" scenario that is so prevalent in this industry.

In short, by getting involved earlier, we can become part of the solution rather than part of the problem.