Let's suppose, that there is a compond maven project project module1 module2 ... (modules are referenced from main pom.xml with <module>) Clicking on a goal (e.g. "compile") of the module will start maven with that goal on that project. This is ok, but if the module has dependencies on other modules from the same project, they have to be packaged and installed in the local repository, otherwise the build will fail. during development it often not necessary at all to package individual modules and install them into local repository. E.g., to compile just module "module1", it is possible to run mvn on main module (=project) with parameters -DgroupId=mygroup -DartifactId=module1. In this case, the module (and all modules it depends upon) will be built without packaging and installations. It would be nice to support this use case in idea as well: e.g., to have some checkbox to control how goals of sub-modules are executed: either directly (like now) or via their supermodule (+ supply -DgroupId=mygroup -DartifactId=module1)