If for some reason a dependency which is declared in the pom of the project needs to be excluded, the excluded flag could be used as follows:
<build> <plugins> <plugin> <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId> <artifactId>maven-ear-plugin</artifactId> <version>3.0.2</version> <configuration> [...] <modules> <webModule> <groupId>artifactGroupId</groupId> <artifactId>artifactId</artifactId> <excluded>true</excluded> </webModule> </modules> </configuration> </plugin> </plugins> </build>