diff --git a/docs/source/contributor-guide/development.md b/docs/source/contributor-guide/development.md
index 356c81b33b..b0d247c0bf 100644
--- a/docs/source/contributor-guide/development.md
+++ b/docs/source/contributor-guide/development.md
@@ -73,6 +73,18 @@ After that you can open the project in CLion. The IDE should automatically detec
 Like other Maven projects, you can run tests in IntelliJ IDEA by right-clicking on the test class or test method and selecting "Run" or "Debug".
 However if the tests is related to the native side. Please make sure to run `make core` or `cd core && cargo build` before running the tests in IDEA.
 
+### Running Tests from command line
+
+It is possible to specify which ScalaTest suites you want to run from the CLI using the `suites`
+argument, for example if you only want to execute the test cases that contains *valid*
+in their name in `org.apache.comet.CometCastSuite` you can use
+
+```sh
+mvn test -Dsuites="org.apache.comet.CometCastSuite valid" -Dskip.surefire.tests=true
+```
+
+Other options for selecting specific suites are described in the [ScalaTest Maven Plugin documentation](https://www.scalatest.org/user_guide/using_the_scalatest_maven_plugin)
+
 ## Benchmark
 
 There's a `make` command to run micro benchmarks in the repo. For
diff --git a/pom.xml b/pom.xml
index 3dce920263..e2e3f6f714 100644
--- a/pom.xml
+++ b/pom.xml
@@ -733,6 +733,7 @@ under the License.
             <systemPropertyVariables>
               <log4j.configurationFile>file:src/test/resources/log4j2.properties</log4j.configurationFile>
             </systemPropertyVariables>
+            <skipTests>${skip.surefire.tests}</skipTests>
           </configuration>
         </plugin>
         <plugin>