I contracted with a big-4 consulting firm on an acquisition of a demergered business and the program had to set up a "one of everything" IT shop and demerge and migrate the data. The program had us coordinating and 4-5 other vendors delivering bits of it. I was there for a year (the program ran for another year+). At the time I left, the Jira count was over 35,000 - though that also included risks, decisions, issues and less common issue types. They probably got close to 100K by the time they were done.

I don't know if "progress" was measured by Jira tickets, but I'm sure it helped some to justify the extortionate rates we charged.