Disable a Maven plugin defined in a parent POM

The following works for me when disabling Findbugs in a child POM:

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
    <artifactId>findbugs-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <id>ID_AS_IN_PARENT</id> <!-- id is necessary sometimes -->
            <phase>none</phase>
        </execution>
    </executions>
</plugin>

Note: the full definition of the Findbugs plugin is in our parent/super POM, so it'll inherit the version and so-on.

In Maven 3, you'll need to use:

 <configuration>
      <skip>true</skip>
 </configuration>

for the plugin.

See if the plugin has a 'skip' configuration parameter. Nearly all do. if it does, just add it to a declaration in the child:

<plugin>
   <groupId>group</groupId>
   <artifactId>artifact</artifactId>
   <configuration>
     <skip>true</skip>
   </configuration>
</plugin>

If not, then use:

<plugin>    
<groupId>group</groupId>   
 <artifactId>artifact</artifactId>    
<executions>
     <execution>
       <id>TheNameOfTheRelevantExecution</id>
       <phase>none</phase>
     </execution>    
</executions>  
</plugin>

The thread is old, but maybe someone is still interested. The shortest form I found is further improvement on the example from λlex and bmargulies. The execution tag will look like:

<execution>
    <id>TheNameOfTheRelevantExecution</id>
    <phase/>
</execution>

2 points I want to highlight:

phase is set to nothing, which looks less hacky than 'none', though still a hack. id must be the same as execution you want to override. If you don't specify id for execution, Maven will do it implicitly (in a way not expected intuitively by you).

After posting found it is already in stackoverflow: In a Maven multi-module project, how can I disable a plugin in one child?

I know this thread is really old but the solution from @Ivan Bondarenko helped me in my situation.

I had the following in my pom.xml.

<build>
    ...
    <plugins>
         <plugin>
                <groupId>com.consol.citrus</groupId>
                <artifactId>citrus-remote-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>${citrus.version}</version>
                <executions>
                    <execution>
                        <id>generate-citrus-war</id>
                        <goals>
                            <goal>test-war</goal>
                        </goals>
                    </execution>
                </executions>
            </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

What I wanted, was to disable the execution of generate-citrus-war for a specific profile and this was the solution:

<profile>
    <id>it</id>
    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>com.consol.citrus</groupId>
                <artifactId>citrus-remote-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>${citrus.version}</version>
                <executions>
                    <!-- disable generating the war for this profile -->
                    <execution>
                        <id>generate-citrus-war</id>
                        <phase/>
                    </execution>

                    <!-- do something else -->
                    <execution>
                        ...
                    </execution>
                </executions>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>
</profile>