crude schematic of maven lifecycle

Build Lifecycle Basics

There are three built-in build lifecycles. 

Each of these build lifecycles is defined by a different list of build phases. (blue text is debug output):

default build lifecycle

[DEBUG] Lifecycle default -> [validate, initialize, generate-sources, process-sources, generate-resources, process-resources, compile, process-classes, generate-test-sources, process-test-sources, generate-test-resources, process-test-resources, test-compile, process-test-classes, test, prepare-package, package, pre-integration-test, integration-test, post-integration-test, verify, install, deploy]

clean build lifecycle

[DEBUG] Lifecycle clean -> [pre-clean, clean, post-clean]

site build lifecycle

[DEBUG] Lifecycle site -> [pre-site, site, post-site, site-deploy]

More about lifecycles can be found here: 
http://maven.apache.org/ref/3.2.1/maven-core/lifecycles.html

How to get maven to list all available goals of the installed plugins:

help:describe -DgroupId=org.apache.maven.plugins  -DartifactId=maven-war-plugin  -Ddetail=true