<p>Imagine you don't have the problem of feature creep, you have a motivated and stable team, clear defined problems to solve, AND you know the domain/language/tools related to your project.</p>

<p>How do you <em>stick to a schedule</em> and accomplish that 1.0 milestone?<br>
What is your approach to an <em>iterative shipping</em>?</p>

<p>I'd like recommendations specially for a small team, where there are few or almost none communication problems.</p>

Focus on features not implementation tasks.
Work in iterations (like weekly or biweekly).
Release working features to your staging environment in order of priority.
Unit test your code as you go, so you're not slowed down by a buglist that increases geometrically as you approach the release date.
Be prepared to cut scope from the less important features. Stuff always takes longer than you think it will.
Make sure you sketch out the UI in advance (if there is a UI), and show it to potential users.
Test, test, and test some more. This seems counter-intuitive, but it saves more time than takes.