DEX-COS™: A Common Operating System
for Digital Employee Experience.
For the first time, the DEX discipline has a vendor-neutral operating standard, created by The DEX Authority, tested by working practitioners, and open for the community to adopt. We support it, we contributed to it, and this page exists to point you to it.
The DEX-COS Practitioner Preview Is Live
On July 15, 2026, The DEX Authority released the V1 Practitioner Preview of DEX-COS™, the DEX Common Operating System, a vendor-neutral operating standard for Digital Employee Experience. The preview is available now for public review, scrutiny, and feedback, with training and certification programs in development.
This matters. IT has mature frameworks for infrastructure and service management, but none of them start with the employee experience. Every organization building a DEX program today has had to invent its own operating model from scratch, and most of those programs stall as a collection of well-intentioned tools. A common standard gives practitioners shared language, gives leaders a credible reference point, and gives the discipline a foundation that doesn't depend on any single vendor's roadmap.
"IT has plenty of frameworks for infrastructure and service management. None of them start with the employee experience, and most vendor programs are heavy on the tech and light on ops. The DEX-COS is different. Every layer went through practitioners who actively run these programs for a living."
The standard was created by Tim Flower, author of DEX for Dummies, original co-host of The DEX Show podcast, and one of the people who defined this discipline over a nearly 40-year enterprise IT career. It was developed with a Practitioner Advisory Council of working DEX professionals who tested it against real enterprise operating environments before release.
This page does not reproduce or teach the standard. The full standard document, the framework, and the training and certification built on it are available directly from The DEX Authority at thedexauthority.com.
The Three Layers, In Tim's Own Words
The DEX Authority has made these official infographics available introducing each layer of the standard. They're shared here with permission. The full standard behind them lives at thedexauthority.com.
The People Layer
View the full infographic (PDF)
The Process Layer
View the full infographic (PDF)
The Technology Layer
View the full infographic (PDF)Infographics © The DEX Authority, LLC. Used with permission.
We Support the Standard
We Support the Effort
A vendor-neutral standard elevates the entire discipline. We're behind Tim Flower and The DEX Authority in building it.
We Encourage Community Adoption
The preview is open for public review and feedback. Every DEX practitioner should read it and contribute.
We're Following It Closely
As the standard matures, we look forward to seeing the discipline organize around it, ourselves included.
Our Contribution
Dexterity Digital's founder, Brett Sonderby, served on the DEX-COS Practitioner Advisory Council, the group of working DEX professionals recruited to test the framework against real enterprise operating environments before its public release. We're proud to have contributed, and we'll keep supporting the standard as it matures and the community around it grows.
Read It. Scrutinize It. Contribute.
The V1 Practitioner Preview is available now. Download the standard, explore the framework, and add your voice while the preview window is open.
DEX-COS™ and the DEX Common Operating System are the work of Tim Flower and The DEX Authority LLC. Dexterity Digital is an independent consultancy. All framework content, education, and certification are available exclusively at thedexauthority.com. Infographics used with permission.