> Then that's the problem we should fix. Instead of creating an extra database field to capture somebody's incorrect opinion, the people who understand priority should be helping developers know enough to have useful opinions.

The priority database field is how you communicate this factor, but there is a point where reasonable people can disagree and the organization needs a way to make decisions clear.

To draw out the example even more: you could have a $600K invoice riding on customer acceptance, when the person at the customer site who signs off won't do so until the customer's logo color is correct. While that crasher when you enter a non-numeric character in a numeric field of a new feature? "We accept the functionality meets the milestone so will sign off but we don't plan to roll it out until next quarter after we have begun training personnel on the new feature."

Sure, every good organization should want everybody, not just developers, to understand the customer's business and such but sometimes you just need to get it shippable.