escalation doesn't happen until after all reminders - so that is part of it.  also, my understanding is that this all relies on the timer service which i think is every 5 minutes, so your reminders are probably happening after 10 minutes each depending on when the task is assigned (in relation to the next five minutes).

‌ is right. Escalation and reminders as well as all other time related actions - rely on the SharePoint Timer Service which is mostly set to work every 5 minutes. You can see it like a bus stepping by every 5 minutes. It collects all passengers (workflow actions that want to do something) and brings them to their destination.

If your workflow action misses the bus it will have to the next one. A waiting-for-one-minute action can be forced to wait up to 5 minutes due to this.

This is primarily done due to performance reasons. SharePoint is not a real-time processing systems and so also it's workflows aren't.

Due to this you can't use SharePoint and/or Nintex for heavily time dependent processes what needs actions to be done within minutes.

Kind regards,

Enrico

It also depends on the load and settings of your SharePoint farm. There are some configurations possible but this should be executed with care. When you search the internet for 'SharePoint workflow throtte batch' you can find more info about it. Note, that this is SharePoint workflow engine related and not Nintex related. Nintex uses the SharePoint workflow engine so the configurations do influence Nintex Workflows.

Thanks!  I was aware of the 5-minute delay from the timer service, which is part of why I set up the test the way I did.  It was not clear that escalation is tied to the reminders.  Good to know.

No worries - for completeness I attach the snippit from help about escalations (available on the action help button):