In managing your portfolio you are striving to lead a process of continuous improvement towards a particular set of strategic objectives. It can be helpful to have a way of visualising the portfolio at any one time and matching this against where you want to be.

A simple tool for doing this is the Boston Matrix (named after its originators in the 1970s the Boston Consulting Group). It is also known as the Growth Share Matrix and the Product Portfolio Analysis. The Boston Matrix is a means of helping companies decide which products they should be investing in by analysing their market share.

Although framed in the language of business the concepts are equally applicable to education. If you have a high share of the market in a particular activity (such as a subject area) you will generally be making a profit and enjoying economies of scale. However you cannot necessarily assume that the market will remain static.

Some areas are likely to grow rapidly meaning that the total market share is expanding and there are opportunities for lots of organisations to make money. Others are declining and just because you make money from them at the moment you can't assume you will continue to do so in the future.

If you are looking at this in terms of projects and programmes your focus may be on particular audience segments e.g. distance learners, work-based learners or research areas rather than particular taught subject areas.

The Boston Matrix places each of the activities in your portfolio on one of four quadrants against axes of Market Share and Market Growth:

The quadrants are defined as follows:

Dogs/Shrinkers        Low Market Share/Low Market Growth

Your market share is low or declining. In many cases this is simply because the market for these activities is declining rather than a weakness in your offer. There may however be opportunities for reasonable returns as a niche player.

Cash Cows/Bankers        High Market Share/Low Market Growth

You are well established in these areas and able to reap dividends without much in the way of further investment. The market for these activities is however not a growing one and you need to estimate whether it is stable or likely to grow/decline in future.

Stars/Growers        High Market Share/High Market Growth

These are areas where there is real opportunity as the market as a whole and your share of it are both increasing. These gains however will not be realised without further development and investment.

Question Marks/Maybes/Problem Children        Low Market Share/High Market Growth

These are high risk areas. There appears to be potential for growth but not without significant further research and investment. This area could also include very innovative ideas where you are currently uncertain of the likely demand.

There is likely to be a typical lifecycle for most of your activities. Commonly this will follow the pattern Maybe - Grower - Banker - Shrinker. However some activities in the Question Marks/Maybes/Problem Children area (especially where they are very innovative) could just as easily absorb effort with little return and move very quickly into the Dogs/Shrinkers zone.

To complete the matrix you need to list your existing portfolio of activities then assign them to the quadrants perhaps using circles of different diameter to indicate the relative importance or resource requirement of each activity. You may find it useful to analyse both your current and desired state or to use arrows to suggest likely movement between quadrants.

The matrix can help you to analyse whether you have the portfolio that you want and whether it matches the type of organisation that you want to be. You can then establish what you need to add or change in order to obtain the desired portfolio.