When I asked someone about parallel builds, I got the following response: In general you should be able to get a parallel executed build for a project with three subprojects as you have described. I pushed a sample skeleton project setup at https://github.com/breskeby/gradle-snippets/tree/master/multiparallel
But in the Gradle manual: gradle.org/docs/current/userguide/multi_project_builds.html
It says: “coupling of projects effectively prevents Gradle from building multiple projects in parallel”
and
“A very common way for projects to be coupled is by using configuration injection. It may not be immediately apparent, but using key Gradle features like the allprojects and subprojects keywords automatically cause your projects to be coupled.”