I had a similar problem but all answers here didn't help me.
For me the problem was a failing test. If you are doing test driven development than a failing / not implemented test shouldn't break the build. I still want my project to build.
To solve this I added a configuration to surefire so that it ignores a failing test.
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.19.1</version>
<configuration>
<testFailureIgnore>true</testFailureIgnore>
</configuration>
</plugin>