The journey from being a new Ph. D.-candidate towards passing the doctorate grade is often a bumpy road with both unexpected and complex challenges that has to be turned in to learning experiences that adds to progression. In this paper we describe the development and use of a tool (the Goalkeeper) designed to support, structure and visualize this journey. It is a tool for supervisors, doctorate students as well as people responsible for quality assurance of a doctorate education. Based on our experiences of having utilised the tool we argue that it is important that the implementation of such a tool is firmly grounded in a quality culture where support of progression and formative assessment dominate over summative assessment and control.