My general strategy, with lounge access, is to go earlier and do coffee/breakfast @ the lounge, after check-in/going through security. If you go through quickly, no problem. But, if you encounter a delay, you have a buffer to deal with it.

I'll give you an example of a delay that did hit me. My wife and I checked in for MXP-JFK and they printed our boarding passes and placed them in the sleeves for each of us. When I got to security I couldn't get through because they had printed two boarding passes for my wife and none for me. They had placed the second one for me in my sleeve but it was not mine. And, of course, I couldn't get my boarding pass to come up in the app. So, my wife went through security and I ran all the way back to the ticketing area and got the correct ticket. Between the lines at the check-in desk and the line at security it cut a lot of time. The extra time came in quite handy then and, of course, I now double check that they print the correct boarding passes.