Development vs Production builds and database disparity

A very general development question -

If you have a development build of an EE site and a production version, with different databases, is there a preferred way (or someone with some insight) on how you keep the databases synced?

For instance, development for new functionality is done on development instance, while new content is being added regularly to the blog on the production (live) side.

If this new development entails setup such as new channels, new categories, etc … Is there an elegant way to push the new functionality (and possibly content) to be ported over without re-doing all the steps on the development side of the live side, without losing content?

Any built add-ons have their own installer methods, which is great, but in practice, many changes in development involve new channels / categories or the like in order to take advantage of EE’s core functionality. This isn’t as easily ported over.