The goals for the Shade Plugin are bound to the package phase in the build lifecycle.
mvn package
<project> ... <build> <plugins> <plugin> <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId> <artifactId>maven-shade-plugin</artifactId> <version>1.2.1</version> <configuration> <!-- put your configurations here --> </configuration> </plugin> </plugins> </build> ... </project>