title: Why is Maven failing with a SurefireExecutionException: > Cannot set option parallel with value
body: <p>Hi I am working through the tutorial here using windows XP and latest builds</p>
  
  <p><a href="http://binil.wordpress.com/2006/12/08/automated-smoke-tests-with-selenium-cargo-testng-and-maven/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://binil.wordpress.com/2006/12/08/automated-smoke-tests-with-selenium-cargo-testng-and-maven/</a></p>
  
  <p>Could someone please tell me what the tags are.</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;parallel&gt;true&lt;/parallel&gt;
  &lt;threadCount&gt;10&lt;/threadCount&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>When I build with these tags included I get a  failure:</p>
  
  <pre><code>-------------------------------------------------------  
  T E S T S
  ------------------------------------------------------- 
  Running TestSuite
  org.apache.maven.surefire.booter.SurefireExecutionException:
  Cannot set option parallel with value
  true; nested exception is
  java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException:
  null; nested exception is
  org.apache.maven.surefire.util.NestedRuntimeException:
  Cannot set option parallel with value
  true; nested exception is
  java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException:
  null
  org.apache.maven.surefire.util.NestedRuntimeException:
  Cannot set option parallel with value
  true; nested exception is
  java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException:
  null
  java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
   at
  sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native
  Method)  at
  sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
   at
  sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
   at
  java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:585)
   at
  org.apache.maven.surefire.testng.conf.AbstractDirectConfigurator$Setter.invoke(AbstractDirectConfigurator.java:117)
   at
  org.apache.maven.surefire.testng.conf.AbstractDirectConfigurator.configure(AbstractDirectConfigurator.java:63)
   at
  org.apache.maven.surefire.testng.TestNGExecutor.run(TestNGExecutor.java:71)
   at
  org.apache.maven.surefire.testng.TestNGXmlTestSuite.execute(TestNGXmlTestSuite.java:92)
   at
  org.apache.maven.surefire.Surefire.run(Surefire.java:177)
   at
  sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native
  Method)  at
  sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
   at
  sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
   at
  java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:585)
   at
  org.apache.maven.surefire.booter.SurefireBooter.runSuitesInProcess(SurefireBooter.java:338)
   at
  org.apache.maven.surefire.booter.SurefireBooter.main(SurefireBooter.java:997)
  Caused by:
  java.lang.NullPointerException  at
  org.testng.TestNG.setParallel(TestNG.java:347)
   ... 15 more [INFO]
  ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
  [ERROR] BUILD FAILURE [INFO]
  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
  </code></pre>