Have there been any studies on productivity and code quality comparing team room approach aka bullpen versus private offices?
I've only been able to find studies comparing the faux office (cubical) versus the real office. I've read about both Caves and Commons and peopleware.
There have. Look for information about Microsoft's programmer offices; they found that having both private offices and a team room environment were the optimal.
I haven't read it (looks like you have to pay), but there is an IEEE paper that might be helpful.
I realize that this won't answer your question, but I really don't understand why there need to be studies on this sort of thing. The implications of either setup are pretty obvious, especially if you've ever worked in each type of environment.
With a bullpen or cubicle setup, communication between team members is going to be maximized but it's going to be difficult for anyone to be maintain their focus and concentration. Maximizing communication in this manner is a double edged sword. It's good because everyone will know what's going on and contribute to technical conversations they eavesdrop on, but it's bad because everyone is going to get sucked into non-work conversations consistently.
With closed door offices, people have to work harder at keeping communication channels open but it's much easier to maintain focus and concentration on tasks.
Having worked in both types of environments, I much prefer closed door offices. A closed door office gives me the choice of whether to be involved in communication or be able to sit and concentrate. Bullpen/cubicle setups do not give me that choice. Even with headphones on, I sometimes find it very difficult to concentrate when there's a conversation going on nearby.
I think the ideal setup would be to have a common area where people can do work in a shared environment if they're not doing anything that requires a great deal of concentration along with closed door offices for when people need to make phone calls or concentrate without distractions. However, I think the reality is that no company is going to pay for that extra space.
Joel Spolsky has a very clear opinion about this matter, and he talks about it quite a lot. His posts aren't academic papers, but his blog has a huge audience. Also, he does quote others in his post, which might provide you a useful link. For starters, see:
In chapter 10 of Peopleware (and the intermezzo immediately preceding it), there is a good discussion of productivity and how to measure it. The concept of flow, which is "a condition of deep, nearly meditative involvement," is discussed here. The authors basically explain how interruptions that break your flow can easily cause you to lose entire workdays of productivity.
In this discussion, they introduce the "E-Factor" or "Environmental Factor" which is the ratio of Uninterrupted Hours to Body-Present Hours. They did a study on E-Factors at various organizations and found that it could get as bad as 0.1 (as it did in the case of some governmental division).
Most relevant to this question, they found that with people doing the same exact job at the same level, those working in a four-person office had much higher E-Factors than those in an open office plan.
There have been theories and discussions, but I do not believe there have been any real scientific studies done AND if there were, they would need to take into consideration the various types of development work and teams that could benefit from the various seating arrangements. I'm sure a more web based team with daily updates would benefit from a more open environment where a more systems like development team with longer release periods and more indepth activities would require more seclusion - and as always each team/person is unique and may/may-not benefit from one or the other...this is why management is called an art. If there was a study you would need many groups and control-groups to ensure consistency.