Most of the popular apps have these days also webhooks. Webhooks are a super simple thing: whenever something specific happens (trigger) they send the information (data) about it to some URL. Eg. Jira webhook could send information about the new sprint when it's created or updated. In N8N you just open the "Webhook" URL and then paste it to whatever app from where you want notifications. Also, you can use N8N "HTTP Request" node to send a webhook to any other app. The same node is used to communicate with API.
🔧 = usually 5-30min job