Maven alternate pom

I will leave the accepted answer as just that, since it is the proper solution to running with an alternate pom file. However, for the use case I described above, I now feel the correct methodology would be to use maven profiles within the pom file.

Maven Profiles Introduction

With profiles, all versions of the test configurations can be contained within the master pom file and then executed as follows:

mvn clean test -PstandardConfig
mvn clean test -PalternateConfig
mvn clean test -PanotherConfig

use the -f option:

mvn -f <other pom file>