Changing the order of maven plugins execution

Since you say you are very new to Maven….Maven builds are executions of an ordered series of phases. These phases are determined by the lifecycle that is appropriate to your project based on its packaging.

Therefore, you control when a plugin’s goal is executed by binding it to a particular phase.

Hope that helps.

EDIT: Also, since Maven 3.0.3, for two plugins bound to the same phase, the order of execution is the same as the order in which you define them. For example:

<plugin>
  <artifactId>maven-plugin-1</artifactId>
  <version>1.0</version>
  <executions>
    <execution>
      <phase>process-resources</phase>
      ...
    </execution>
  </executions>
</plugin> 
<plugin>
  <artifactId>maven-plugin-2</artifactId>
  <version>1.0</version>
  <executions>
    <execution>
      <phase>process-resources</phase>
      ...
    </execution>
  </executions>
</plugin> 
<plugin>
  <artifactId>maven-plugin-3</artifactId>
  <version>1.0</version>
  <executions>
    <execution>
      <phase>generate-resources</phase>
      ...
    </execution>
  </executions>
</plugin>

In the above instance, the execution order would be:

1. maven-plugin-3 (generate-resources)
2. maven-plugin-1 (process-resources)
3. maven-plugin-2 (process-resources)