Everybody seems to have glowing praise of Maven at the moment. The problem is, it's not immediately apparent from the site's front page what Maven actually does. On one hand, I really don't have the time to play around with Maven until I grok it. On the other hand, if I did grok it, perhaps it would save me an inordinate amount of time in the future? I don't know.

What's the pay-off? What's in it for me? Please answer in under one hundred words, with buzzword count below five. A back-of-the-barmat summary would be really helpful, could anyone out there in blog-land either mail me one or post one so I can hunt you down via referers?