When there are no tests, or maven.test.skip=true, then the build classes and resources are not included in the ejb jar file. As a workaround, you can set java:compile and java:jar-resources as preGoals for ejb:ejb in your maven.xml: <preGoal name="ejb:init"> <j:if test="${unitTestSourcesPresent != 'true' or context.getVariable('maven.test.skip') == 'true'}"> <attainGoal name="java:compile"/> <attainGoal name="java:jar-resources"/> </j:if> </preGoal>