Note: If you are new to state transitions, see State Transitions. 

A delay element is a child element of a transition element that causes any child elements following the delay element to be executed after a specified time instead of when the transition becomes active. See delay, transition. In practice, this means that delayed scripting elements in a transition are executed asynchronously like an event instead of synchronously like a subroutine. See Scripting. 

You specify the length of the delay in milliseconds. It is even possible to specify zero for no delay, but so long as a delay element is provided the scripting statements are not executed before control returns to the calling code. See Execution Order. 

Figure 1. A transition with and without a delay element.

State Transitions, Execution Order, Scripting, <delay>, <transition>