Yes they are combat rounds of 6 seconds. But of course if you find it unrealistic you could change it. Without mounts or movement spells, the PCs will have a difficult time being everywhere at once, but that is exactly what the AP assumes: they can't solve all the problems, and the town will suffer losses. A likely outcome is that they capture NPCs and return to Jorgenfist with them, in which case you have a nice hook for the next part.
I played strictly with the given times, but besides the times I made a lot of changes. The players started playing as NPCs before the PCs arrived to save the day. The NPCs killed some goblins and a bugbear before giants arrived through the north gate (the goblinoids came through a hole in the wall that the giants created by throwing stones), then held their ground 1 or 2 rounds before the PCs arrived. I think I subtracted 1 or 2 rounds total from the timer to compensate for this.
The PCs dealt with the giants quickly but were always one step behind. They let Longtooth attack all buildings before killing him at the final spot, Teraktinus went to the lighthouse and back and they saw him at the edge of town when he ran off with a Hellflume stone, even attacked him from long range but without any effect. In the meantime they fought other giants that came from the east and were pillaging, and they did manage to catch up out of town with the giants that looted Scarnetti manor since they were travelling slowly with all that loot.
Overall, many NPCs died, and many were captured, so the PCs rested, interrogated a captured giant, and immediately went after Jorgenfist. Which is what the AP assumes. But most importantly, the players liked this encounter, though the slow moving paladin did not have a mount and was frustrated that his allies went faster than him, he often missed out on the action. But he was more angry at his allies as he believed that the encounters were waiting for them to arrive (they were not).
I played strictly with the given times because I wanted the PCs to make hard choices on where to go and how to respond. But the morale tracker had the giants retreating early, which was a bit of a bummer.
I looked at it this way. They are not going to save the city! They can help defend it, but they can not succeed.
The giants want one thing, and as soon as they get it, they are out of there. They grab some additional on the way out, or in the process, just because they can. Heck, my group spent most of the time fighting a dragon. So, not even a focused on the prize that they had no idea even existed.
For me, the key was telling the story points. Make sure they see what the giants took. I felt it was a great encounter.
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I ran it mostly as written.... barring the fact that I amped up the Giants a fair amount. My party still zoomed through things at high speed, making it to each point within a round or so of each event, including hosing down Longtooth before he attacked more than two points. His death from flight DID cause some collateral damage as he crashed through the Mill on the east side of town.
All parties are different. Judge yourself if you need to slow down or even speed up the time table! You know if your party does or does not have an archer on a flying carpet, routine use of haste or blessing of fervor, dimension door, teleport effects, horses, etc. (Mine had ALL of those)
Match your playstyle, with where you are vs expectations (I'm running way above baseline, as in, we're nearing the end of book 5, and are 19th level).
My party had a blast, as do most that recount how their raid went. Play it up! I managed to print up a map of Sandpoint over 6 pieces of paper, and ran that as my battlemap. The scale was rough, but it enhanced the experience.
My group managed it as well without much in the way of casualties, seeing they caught a glimpse of the giants in the early morning and called an alarm. Nearly everyone evacuated. In fact, one character was quite put out that she couldn't subdue the dragon because she wanted a pet dragon. ^^;; I even added a pair of assassins attacking (due to the Scarnettis) immediately after the dragon was taken down.