I have the following setup: org.example.pom/pom.xml: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd" > <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion> <groupId>org.example</groupId> <artifactId>pom</artifactId> <packaging>pom</packaging> <version>1</version> <name>POM</name> <properties> <webapp.version>${project.version}</webapp.version> </properties> </project> and org.example.jar/pom.xml: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd" > <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion> <parent> <groupId>org.example</groupId> <artifactId>pom</artifactId> <version>1</version> <relativePath>../org.example.pom/pom.xml</relativePath> </parent> <groupId>org.example</groupId> <artifactId>jar</artifactId> <packaging>jar</packaging> <version>${webapp.version}</version> <name>JAR</name> </project> Running "mvn clean" in org.example.jar yields just [INFO] Scanning for projects... and then Maven hangs. Replacing "${project.version}" with a simple "0.1" allows things to work properly. My environment: Maven version: 2.0.8 Java version: 1.5.0_14 OS name: "linux" version: "2.6.24-gentoo-r2" arch: "i386" Family: "unix"