Guys, we all know what happens when you get multiple people on a project. They have to communicate. That means regular meetings. Maybe they all meet daily. Then someone in the meeting has to write up what was discussed in the meeting so it can be presented to management. There there is the meeting with management to discuss the report. Then there is the meeting with coworkers to discuss managements comments on the previously mentioned meeting. And finally there is the meeting to discuss why nothing is getting accomplished in the meetings.
So in the end triple the people means half the work.
Seriously though, have to agree we are not seeing the kind of pace we should if there really are 3 full time people working on this. What I suspect is there are 3 people who spend some time working on this but it is just one of their responsibilities. Been there done that as a programmer. You get called in to managers office and told you are now assigned to whatever project but none of your other projects is taken off your plate. However we were led to believe there would be 3 dedicated programmers and based on results hard to believe that is the case.
Though another possibility is those extra programmers were only brought in to fix the immediate problems they were having and once the site was basically running consistently those programmers were released or assigned to other projects. If that is the case then they could argue they did not lie with that announcement you reference.