My experience echos the frustration of many of the posts here. The problem with Maven is that it wraps and hides the details of build management in its quest for ultimate automagical goodness. This makes you nearly helpless if it breaks.
My experience is that any problem with maven quickly degenerated into a multi-hour snipe hunt through webs of nested xml files, in an experience similar to root canal.
I've also worked in shops that relied heavily on Maven, the people who liked it (who liked it for the "push a button, get it all done" aspect) didn't understand it. The maven builds had a million automatic targets, which I'm sure would be useful if I felt like taking the hours to read through what they did. Better 2 targets that work that you fully understand.
caveat : last worked with Maven 2 years ago, it may be better now.
