FWIW - I think your problem is way further up the food chain than the BO's. Having multiple developers making uncontrolled schema changes to existing applications sound like the stuff of nightmares. Fist cab of the rank, in my opinion, is a bit of order in your shop then, when you have a change process in place, think about how to propergate (known and approved) changes into your apps.

Cheers, Peter

To explain the issue, the binding field is a string so technically it is weak typed and not evaluated until run-time.  We work in a team environment here as well and on our medical application.  However, when we make a structure change, we know that there is the potential for others to have an issue.  So we talk with other team members if there is a chance that this could cause an external issue and we also use the Team Foundation tasks, etc. so that other developers may be made away.  Usually, the developer who makes the structure change is responsible for making sure that any downstream issues get resolved.

Now, back to your original point and question, it is our desire to force strong-typing into the forumla in a future SF version.  But this is much more difficult than it would seem.  In fact, native .NET data-binding is not stong-typed either....that is one of the pieces that holds this process back.  So for now, the best rule of thumb is to develop some good internal policies.