In the pump-probe method the reaction is first triggered (pump) by photolysis (most often laser light) and then a diffraction pattern is collected by an X-ray pulse (probe) at a specific time delay. This makes it possible to obtain many images at different time delays after reaction triggering, and thereby building up a chronological series of images describing the events during reaction.
To obtain a reasonable signal to noise ratio this pump-probe cycle has to be performed many times for each spatial rotation of the crystal, and many times for the same time delay. Therefore, the reaction that one wishes to study with pump-probe must be able to relax back to its original conformation after triggering, enabling many measurements on the same sample.
The time resolution of the observed phenomena is dictated by the time width of the probing pulse (full width at half maximum). All processes that happen on a faster time scale than that are going to be averaged out by the convolution of the probe pulse intensity in time with the intensity of the actual x-ray reflectivity of the sample.