I think the second NPE that you ran into was probably this one: http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/SUREFIRE-300 Looks like it has been fixed, but the fixed version hasn't been released yet. I'm not sure about the other one, looks like it could have been something wrong in the assembly configuration. If you try "mvn -X" it will enable debugging, and sometimes this gives more information, but obviously the error handling could be better. The pom packaging type is just for things like a parent pom. So that's why it doesn't compile any of the java files. Maven thinks that your project is just a pom. The dependency management is in there to manage the inter-module dependencies. That way we don't have something like module A and B dependent on module C version 2 and C 2.1 respectively. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4060537#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...